From Loaves To Fishes
by Anotherjaneway
Summary: One big mountain, one very, very small crew. The gang misses their state of the art fire station and vehicles dearly when a firestorm surrounds them on a boyscout river kayak trip event.


This is a text version of the original still airing imaged, music soundtracked story.

Emergency Theater Live, Episode Ten

10. From Loaves To Fishes Season Two - Episode 10 Short summary-  
One big mountain, one very, very small crew. The gang misses their state of the art fire station and vehicles dearly when a firestorm surrounds them on a boyscout river kayak trip event.

****WARNING**** The long summary to come is very story spoiling and will take away plot surprises if you read it now before reading the longer story below it.

Decide now if you want to read this episode's detailed summary before doing so.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Long Summary-  
Chet finds Johnny unloading hay in the station's backyard one morning and asks why. The station responds to a fuel truck crash on a mountain side involving a highway tunnel. Gage and Roy are trapped inside with chlorine gas leaking from storage tanks. They escape the underground fire by using an emergency tunnel leading to a forest ranger's station now on a vigil over the new brush fire ignited by the accident. They meet the Sierra rangers rescue unit and get swept up into searching for some lost children at a riverside campsite before the fire gets there. Chet falls in love with the idea of horses.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The Story Unfolds...

Season Two, Episode Ten.. From Loaves To Fishes

Debut Launch: 1 April 2004.

Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2004 18:56:43 -0700 (PDT) From: "Jeff Seltun" Subject: Needle In A Haystack.. Chet Kelly took a firm bite into his donut and ambled into the predawn of the station's backyard. He was still sleepy and rubbed the crusty stones out of his eyes.. Then he rubbed them again.

A strange pickup truck was parked in the usual spot where Gage's land rover was usually angled in and Johnny was perched in the load bed, holding...

"...A pitchfork?.." Chet gaped, then he began to chuckle,  
waking up more fully. "Hey guys, come out here and get a load of this.. I swear, you aren't gonna believe this one bit."

Johnny just paused in his assigned chore, knee deep in sweet smelling straw, spreading the bed evenly throughout the back of the truck..."..wonderful..." he mumbled sarcastically. "There goes Kelly, always sticking his nose in things. Maybe I should've waited on doing this until later."

Kelly was soon joined by coffee wielding firemen fresh out of bed. Henry's snores, could just be heard through the open screened kitchen window. Chet turned around at a scuffle of gravel and glanced back towards the shadowy silhouette of the station.

Stoker was running fingers through sleep matted hair and Cap was already foaming his jawline with a cream brush for a straight razored shave, a neatly folded white towel slung over a shoulder. Marco was just plain yawning and Roy was not far behind Lopez, buttoning into a fresh uniform top.

"Kelly?" Hank asked. "What's the problem? Did you check the meter yet like I asked you to?"

"No, Cap. Check this out first. Just take a good look around, ok?  
What do ya see?" Chet said expansively, gesturing about the yard with broad spread arms.

"Ahhhhh.." Cap said scratching his head. "The rush hour on the freeway? Sounds like it's backed up over an hour longer than normal this morning. Odd. It's not even the weekend. Maybe a crash just occurred. We'll know about it in a few minutes if that's the case."

"No, no no.. nothing so obvious, Cap. Now just open your eyes bigger for just a second. Look what one of your paramedics is doing right over there.." Kelly sputtered in frustration.

Cap's eye fell on Roy, who was immediately to his left. "..Ok.. uhh, That one of the new uniform shirts, Roy?"

Kelly turned purple. "No.. Gawd. Aww come on, do I have to spell it out for you fellas? Cap, you usually aren't this slow. Don't tell me that you're tired." Chet bemoaned.

"Chet, at this time of the morning. Yes, I am. You know I haven't gotten a hold of Marco's coffee pot yet.  
Not until I get myself at least halfway presentable for day shift do I fire off enough brain cells to matter."

Marco said, "Yeah, that's right, Chet. He doesn't."

"Stubble and java just don't go well together, Chet.  
And neither will you and a mop if you don't start cutting the chaff! It's cold out here.." Captain Stanley grumbled rubbing the goose bumps erupting out on his bare T shirt exposed arms.

Chet was cowed, but only on his face. His voice was still thoroughly annoyed at his crewmates' lack of observational skills. "It's Gage, man. He's up to something fishy, I know it."

Hank spun his gaze around, squinting into the darkness towards Johnny, who was still pitchforking apart a bale of straw inside the rental truck. "No, I'd say he's doing only what I asked him to do.."

And with that, Cap and the rest of the gang retreated once more back into the oven warmed kitchen, leaving Kelly behind with his mouth hanging open.

"Better close that real soon or you'll start drawing flies in.." Johnny quipped, cracking a crooked smile while he worked. Dusting his hands off, Gage gave a satisfied grunt and leaped down out of the truck's bed to the ground. Only then, did Chet see that Gage wasn't in his paramedic's uniform.

Johnny ambled slowly towards Chet, swaggering, with his fingers hooked through his jeans belt loops. "So, are you going to ask ME anything here, Chet? You already failed at getting it out of them. It would've been easier doing that instead of harrassing the guys about it in the first place."

Chet made a face and rubbed his nose. "Would you have answered me?"

Johnny's face fell into serious lines.. Then his lip curled up wickedly in a grin and he headed for the kitchen door. "Nope. Just go ahead and ask now. Won't hurt you any to give in a little to get what you wanna know."

Chet paced a full meter behind Johnny for long seconds.  
Then he almost whispered.. "You working today?"

"Nope." came Gage's quick reply.

Chet set his hands on his hips.. "Well you answered THAT question just fine. "

"That's the only question you've PUT to me so far, Chet.  
I'm not a mystic, you know."

Kelly groaned and rolled his eyes painfully, accepting his currrent oneupmanship lump with a decent sized shred of grace.

Luckily, the lack of sunlight prevented Johnny from seeing the meager defeat writing across Kelly's features.  
"I'm gonna go shower. Remember, I'll kill ya if you grab that last chocolate donut from the green plate."

"No ya won't,.. because you're a paramedic.."

"OK, I'll kill ya first, ..THEN... I'll bring ya back.  
Slowly..."

Chet wasn't too reassured by that subtle change of detail.

He decided to keep on a low profile to learn what he needed to learn about the new day's mystery playing out where he couldn't reach it.

Kelly slunk back inside into a chair next to Henry and tickled their rotund mascot awake.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hank was completely shaven and he had a stack of papers in front of him, twenty minutes later. "Listen up folks. What you've all been waiting for.. Details on this year's Fireman's Picnic Event.."

"Say, Cap." Marco inflected. "Isn't that this weekend?"

"It is.."

"Where's it gonna be this year?" Roy asked, wiping crumbs off his shirt.

"At Bailey's Park in Anaheim."

"That's the new amusement park off the 405, isn't it?"  
Stoker asked.

"Yep. And the Fireman's Board has already gotten a hold of two dozen tickets for us and our families as well as enough for our YMCA sponsors, too. Food's already planned, and so's one minor detail. Gage is kindly providing us with a pony from home."

Chet looked up eagerly from the newspaper he was pretending to read. ::Pony? So that's what all that straw is for..::

"Not a pony, Cap, uh,, sir. A Falabella." Johnny corrected scholarly and full of meek respect.

Lopez reached over and patted Johnny on the back as he sat down. " Yeah, Good going. I couldn't remember that term to tell the rest of the guys. Gracias, Gage. Luis is going to simply love you. He says it's his final Make A Wish request to ride a horse."

Kelly's forehead furrowed more deeply as he listened in.  
::Gage is still not dressed in his uniform. The Picnic isn't until this weekend... so why isn't he scheduled a shift today?.::

Right then, Johnny spoke around his long ago targetted donut,  
chewing loudly. "I'm gonna go out to the ranch and pick up Cochise right after breakfast. I'm sure Henry won't mind him taking over his pad for a few days."

Chet just about choked on his toast, eliciting a few curious glances of inquiry from Cap and Stoker. :: How the h*ll can a horse fit in a medium sized doghouse?:: "I'm fine. I'm fine.  
Henry just bumped me, stretching. I coughed it all out. " and he covered his surprise and puzzlement with a stocks section again before anyone else noticed him in closer scrutiny.

"Don't forget his grain, Gage. I've already cleared it with the chief and the city to keep your Falabella on property for the two days we'll have him until then." Hank reminded Johnny. "Provided all shifts keep up with all his uh,... bodily functions."

"No problem, Cap. Cochise's a stallion but he's really a pussycat, in all ways that matter, including that one. And he does know how to use a litter box." he said mysteriously.

Chet's frowning expression only deepened behind the sports page.

"Say, Cap. On second thought, I can have my foreman deliver Cochise for me. It's not too late to send Dwyer back to his station. They've extra crew with that rookie paramedic training this month."

Hank looked up from where he was scrubbing Henry's ears affectionately. "You sure? You usually detest overtime."

"Not this week. I've a spring hayfield planting to pay for."  
Johnny groaned.

"Ok, go get changed, I'll log it into the books later this afternoon."

Dwyer came in from the showers a few minutes later and he saw Johnny with his uniform shirt on, unbuttoned and shoes not yet tied. "Hey. Hey..." he celebrated.  
"Cap, does this mean I get to go to my son's little league practice after all?"

"Sure does. Do you mind?"

"Nope. I don't. Any extra time with Andy's a treat. He's growing up so fast, you know?"

Cap nodded. "Have fun Dwyer, thanks."

Right then, the tones went off.. Long ones.

Dwyer said, "I'll do the dishes..." And he jumped to his feet. "I'll feed Henry, too, before I leave while I'm at it."

"Good man.." Cap said, trucking out of the door after his men.

##Station 51, Station 36, Brush Truck 114, Engine 110. Fuel truck overturned on the overpass. 1/2 mile south of Turner's Peak. Mile marker 226. 1/2 mile south of Turner's Peak. Mile marker 226. Timeout, 07:14.##

Fifteen minutes later, they all could see just what they were heading into..

--------------------------------------------

Photo : Johnny and Roy in street clothes.

Photo: Chet looking bugged.

Photo: A highway fire with rescue vehicles en route.

*  
From : patti keiper Sent : Friday, April 16, 2004 1:11 AM Subject : Quick Silver.. Captain Stanley saw that he was the first of high-ish rank on scene. He quickly sized up the accident while Mike Stoker took the engine in a wide C around the fire and the dangerous spreading ignited fuel streams spidering from the crash. He could just see the truck, a heavy barreled tanker, on its flank, jammed against the mountain it must have just passed underneath on the road, before it lost control. No other cars were evident.

Hank thumbed the radio mic, "L.A. Station 51.  
We're at mile marker 226 at the foothill exit of an interstate bridge by Turner's Pass. We have a lone 7,000 gallon fuel tanker on its side with a fully involved, working fire. We'll need two additional pumper units with brush capability in a second alarm assignment. Tanker cargo is spilling burning unleaded gasoline into the river canyon. I'm reconfirming that air fire support is positively required. Curtail your ladder response, we're in the open against a mountain side."

##10-4, 51. Notifying second alarm with air support. Brush stations 19 and 26, are responding.  
Helicopters Nine and Twelve are now in route. Air ETA,  
15 minutes. All second in ground, in 10. Engine 51, your incident time is 0 plus two. Time : 07:36. ##

"Noted.." and Stanley tossed his microphone down onto the engine's seat as Mike found a safe staging area 800 feet away from the flaming maelstrom that was once a metallic silver fuel truck. He plowed out of his seat and ordered everyone into SCBA tanks and gear. "Nobody goes in there without foam first.  
Gang? Be prepared to abandon at any peep of a code red tone over your HTs, we don't know if the main payload's gone up yet or not."

"Cap? Any sign of the driver?" Roy asked donning his faceplate and connecting his inhalation tube to the connector over his mouth. He flipped up his collar when he felt the intense heat of the fire blazing, even from their safe distance.

"No.. Don't think he made it out. There's a spot in the cab burning yellower than the rest of it.." Hank replied.

"Oh, I smell it now. Think you're right, Cap.." Johnny said grimly. "Looks like zone protection duty for us, Roy. Then rehab backup later after the others get here." he predicted.  
"I'll delegate rehabilitation setup to 36's. They've been on duty longer than we have. We're less tired."

"That's the plan." Hank nodded, then he lifted his head when he caught sight of Brush Truck 114 and Engine 110 closely followed by Station 36, all of them roaring towards them.

They were barely visible in the thick rolling, black smoke.

Cap cast his eyes around long enough to spot a thin white and red striped pole sticking out of the chaparral off the roadway. "Only one hydrant?"

Stoker affirmed. "So far. It'll take a few minutes to locate the rest. Looks like the Highway Department's behind on brush control again this year."  
Cap sighed. "Kelly, get and install an eductor. Engine 36 will be your booster tank water."

Chet nodded. "I'll get out the bins."

"Until 110 lays foam and is set for us, Stoker, a single line lay. Lopez, pull Stoker's inch and 3/4's WITH a Gate Valve.. Don't know where the other hydrants are in all this brush and no way in h*ll do we want to tie up 110 one iota."

"Right, Cap.." Marco said, hopping into action, with a hydrant wrench clanging against his air bottle.

"We're not attacking this?" Johnny asked Hank.

"We were first in. I'm Incident Commander until one of the chiefs gets here. Somebody has to direct everybody who's incoming " Stanley said ruefully. "In the meantime, you and Roy, go on a Primary Survey. Case the area on a buddy line. Get no farther than fifty feet from any working hose at all times. We gotta find all the hotspots ..."  
Johnny started eagerly away but felt Cap's grip on his arm that halted him solidly. ".....and keep your ever loving skins intact, Kapeesh? That goes double for you, Gage. I'm still remembering last month's medical leave figures."

"I hear ya.. I hear ya.." Johnny grinned lopsidedly through his air mask. "I got Pally here to drag me out if I do something stupid." he gestured. "Besides, this isn't a building with a saggy roof. It's on concrete. What kind of trouble can we get into on that?"

Roy just rolled his eyes. "Grabbing irons.. A lot of the wreck looks like it's off the road."

Cap gave both his paramedics a gloved thumbs up, but then turned back to reporting details to the fire watch at L.A. Headquarters. "L.A., Engine 51. Send in a Code K. At least one Code F's at our location in the truck."

##10-4, Engine 51. Investigations has been notified.##

"10-4, Standing by."

"Stoker get a wyed line to 110 through Chet. They're ready."

On cue, 110's engineer and pumper man grabbed Stoker's supply line and laid it into a triple wide,  
fuel spill specific foam unit. Slowly, the machine hummed to life, flooding the road with its cooling repellent which washed over the boiling flames.

"Watch it! Watch it!" shouted 110's captain. A tongue of ignited flowing fuel was coursing along the curb edge of the roadway on the outside turn, narrowly catching the boots of the advancing foam team.

The men hastily danced out of the way and smothered the phalange with foam liberally.

Cap waved in Marco and Chet on an attack line off 36's engine to start washing the fuel byproduct away a few steps behind the foam crew. Kelly groaned. "Geez, that was close. And we're 900 feet away from the truck. Just how much fuel's outside of the tank? I'm surprised that creeper got out this far."

Cap overheard Kelly's complaining shout to Lopez.  
"Most of it, hopefully. " he grinned through his faceplate. "Roy and Johnny are in there, checking it out."

Chet and Lopez turned their eyes to the column of midnight black soot looming eerily into the daylit sky.

Roy got as near to the truck as he dared. ::Not much of the cab left.:: and he jogged along one side of the tanker while Gage checked the other for leakage from the mother valve in the undercarriage of the fuel tank. It was intact. ::Great. A slow leak.::

He lifted his HT to his mouth. "Johnny? How does your side look? I've got a trickling main valve, but that's all.."

Gage raised an arm over his head as a flame flare shot out from the passenger side of the cab as a gust of wind swept through it while it burned.  
##I can't tell. I can't see anything. All I know is that there's more fuel here than what's accounted for.##

"Let's get back together on the tail end. I'm getting a little nervous." DeSoto admitted into his talkie.

##You and me both.##

But their plan never happened. The mountain got in the way. A raw face of rock and blistering fire rose up out of the smoke before both firefighters.

##Roy?##

"Yeah.."

##You seeing rock?##

"Yep. What I can see of it through all the smoke."

##Then why is it so windy over here?##

Right then, the column of smoke twisted away revealing a yawning mouth of blackness in the shape of a square, 20 feet high and the width of the road.  
In the dimness, Gage could just make out a hotspot.  
And it was heating the unmistakable shape of a chassis. ##Roy hoof it back and follow my route! There's a TUNNEL my side and at least one burning car located about two hundred feet inside of it. ##

Roy switched over to the command frequency.  
"Squad 51, to Engine 51."

##Battalion 14 for Engine 51.##

::Ah, change of personnel. Cap will be relieved to be able to fight this fire instead of directing it:  
"Chief.. we've found more vehicular involvement.  
Gage and I have just located a tunnel that appears to go through the mountain. Wasn't clear before because the truck and fire were blocking sight of it."

##Survivors?##

"Still too soon to tell."

Hank Stanley joined in on a side band. ##Get to safe ground and wait for hose support. Air currents in tunnels are too tricky to mess with. Fire could backdraft a lot farther than you'd expect if a gas tank or something else hidden, goes up.##

##Keep me informed, Squad 51. Go in with the recovery team once your safety is secured.##

"10-4, Battalion. " Roy acknowledged.

Soon, DeSoto had made it over to where he could see Gage climbing up over the mouth of the rocky tunnel and onto a ledge just above it that was clear of fumes and flame. He pulled off his mask after feeling the coolness of safe air against his neck. "What do you think? See anything?"  
he asked his sweaty partner, who was equally pleased to pull off his SCBA.

"At least one car... " he said rubbing grit from his mouth and cheeks." Roy, it's a raging inferno only partway down, that completely fills the tunnel.  
I doubt if anyone is alive in there. There can't be air to breathe."

"Must be something if that fire is burning."

Gage squatted down, watching a hasty hose and foam team advance towards them from the staging area and the engines that were preconnected to each other from Stoker's hillside hydrant. On a thought,  
he raised the antennae on his handytalkie and hailed out. "Squad 51 to Battalion 14."

##Battalion 14... Go ahead.##

"Chief.. Do you know how long this particular tunnel is? We're seeing active fire and are wondering about the chance of casualties being on the other side of it."

##Still in the process of I. the exact specs. The sign bolted to the rock beneath you has been charred beyond recognition.##

Surprised, Johnny looked down the shallow cliff over his feet. A wall of heat punished him for looking and he coughed, hastily sucking in a restoring breath from his mask as he fell onto his butt to get away from it.

Roy sighed, "You ok? That wasn't very smart, Junior.  
Heat rises.."

"I know that. I know that.." Johnny coughed defensively.  
"I was just.... I don't know..checking it out.. Like what we were ordered to do.." he said, wiping streaming tears from his face.

"Didn't include checking out the sign ..."

Johnny didn't dignify his partner with a reply but instead thumbed his radio. "10-4, Battalion 14. Standing by for details. So far, we've got clean smoke. Ok, for teams to proceed."

Roy chuckled, parking his butt on a butte right next to Gage. "Gage, the mine hole canary. Say, you could ask Cap for more hazard pay. I think you've just invented a new job duty.."

"Oh would you just shut up." Johnny growled.

Slowly his coughs subsided as the air from his mask got rid of the fumes he had inhaled.

Then the mountain started rumbling..

"Uh oh.. I don't think I like the sound of that.."  
Johnny peeped.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo: Burning fuel coursing down a rural road.

Photo: Cap and Johnny in brush on talkies.

Photo: Engines working in heavy smoke.

Photo: Roy and Johnny inside fire in SCBA.

Photo: A fire deep inside a tunnel and an involved truck.

Photo: Burning yellow orange tongue of fire.

*  
From : Roxy Dee Sent : Tuesday, May 18, 2004 2:25 AM Subject : Heart of the Beast

Their walkie talkies sprang to life in a treble tone all call of an electronic heads up, piercing and sharp. Static spat only half of Captain Stanley's urgent shout over the din of the flames and the hillside's new, sudden deep belching. ## Rockslide! Abandon location! Gage?! DeSoto?! ##

Roy didn't mince words. "Move! Johnny, move!"

"Where? The d*mned truck fire's flaring over the ledge outta here." Gage angrily said. Fear tinged more of his face than his voice. Johnny slipped as the two firefighters whirled around for an escape route. He hastily righted his balance using Roy's bigger frame by grabbing a quick hold of his shoulders.

"Jump straight out!" Roy yelled, ducking as the first wildly bouncing boulders sliced through the brush surrounding them. A pine tree near them severed as a rock the size of a car shredded it into an explosion of dirt , twisted limbs and flying wood splinters.

"The tunnel? You must be crazy." Johnny said.  
But his feet and hands flew in that direction over the trembling ground as his slender body skidded over mesquite and outcroppings.

"You'd rather be flattened than burned to death?  
Johnny, I'm surprised at you.." Roy huffed.

Before Gage could think of another rejoinder,  
the ground before them ran out. Johnny froze,  
but Roy gave him a firm push fowards into the small of his back.

With twin shouts, both men fell over the lip of rock over the tunnel's keystone and down past the licking flames near its roof.

They fell heavily onto their air bottles in a graceless back flop onto the highway eight feet below. Missiles of stone smacked onto the pavement in a thick rain, noisily annihilating themselves against the burning road around the fallen firemen.

Roy lifted his HT even as Johnny dragged them both through the dust into the very dubious shelter beyond.

His free hand grabbed their helmets which had been jolted from their heads when they fell.  
"Cap! We're going in!"

Then the rockslide's quicksilver bulk cut off the outside and daylight as its bite sealed DeSoto and Gage inside the violently burning tunnel.

Gage and Roy dropped to their bellies as the new interior fire reached out to grab them.

Johnny's stunned gasps whistled under his mask as he fought to regain breath and bearing. "Roy?  
You ok?"

"Yeah.." came a reply, just as shaky and strained.

"Did you crack anything? Your regulator? The main valve? Your mask's steaming up already." Gage said as both men clung glove to glove as they maintained contact in the murky superheated black.

"My air's still good. Yours?"

"It's fine. It's ok.." Gage panted.

Both men stayed still until their eyes got used to the saturine fireglow coming from the flaming ceiling.

Moments later, a furnace blast of heat boiled against them from the heart of the multi-automobile fire they could both see a hundred twenty meters away. Outside atmosphere was no longer the cooling protection it had been before the mountain caved in.

"Ahh!" They both snatched their hands under their armpits as they crawled using knees and elbows, to a tunnel wall.

"We gotta find an access door before we cook." Gage said.

"There's one every hundred feet if I remember correctly."

Gage groaned, "Yeah, but which hundred foot part are we in? Before or after one? We're at a mouth end." Bruises made the paramedic lag behind more and more.

Roy grabbed his partner's overcoat collar and pulled him along with him as he scraped his shoulder along the rocky wall as a directional guide. "Don't slow down. We're nearly out of time. It's gotta be near 180 F in here already."

"Coming mother.." Gage squeaked, exhausted.

Roy risked frying his gloved fingers as he opened them to feel for the recess of the maintenance door's frame from the lumpy wall. Sizzling metal, bit into the material of his glove when he found it. "Aghh, here!"

And he pulled out his jacket halligan to break the emergency key from its glass housing box by reaching only an arm up into the boiling heat above them.

Gage winced as glass shattered musically onto their helmets and a brighter bounce in front of him showed him where the key was. "I got it."

Roy gave out an involuntary yelp and snatched his air burned arm back down to the much cooler ground level.

"My turn." Gage said.

"The lock may already be warped." DeSoto panted.

"I'll get us in.." Johnny said fiercely, psyching himself up for the punishing pain of heat up near the door's handle. Blindly, he groped. When one arm burned,  
he traded arms, stubbornly alternating them as he tried to insert the tiny key into the lock with his thick gloves.

Then, a subtle click came over the rock echoey fire.

Gage took a breath and got up onto his knees long enough to snatch the metal door open. ::Don't melt, don't melt.:: he willed to his faceplate's rubber fittings.  
Johnny hit his chin on the floor when he quickly dropped back down into their safe air afterwards. "Go. You first. Your mask may be damaged."

Roy went.

Gage kicked the door shut behind them and sealed them off into total darkness. The cooler air inside felt like a balm against their seared jackets and pants legs. "Hah! Not today. " he sneered at the blocked fire. "Today's not a good day to die.."

Roy smiled as he rested face masked down against the floor. He could feel sweat turning blessedly cold against his neck. "Is that more of the trademark Gage Indian mysticism?"

"Huh? No. I'm not Cherokee. That was 100%  
genuine Anglo Saxon literal English. I just don't want to die right now. Do you?" Johnny smiled quirkily.

"Not if I can help it. Come on, let's find a light switch."

"Think the power's still on?"

"Yeah. That fire out there hasn't been burning long enough for Rural Station Utilities to deal with it."

"No problem. I'll just use my innate Seminole tracking skills to find us a light source." Johnny's voice laughed.

Roy was big enough not to laugh when he heard the unmistakable sound of a skull bouncing off a stair railing.

"Owww!" Gage said as he clicked the lights on.

"What? Don't those innate skills of yours extend a bit of agility into the equation?"

Johnny just shot him a dirty look.

"Don't worry. I won't hold it against you. Never have in the past. I just keep bailing your butt whenever you can't get it out of somewhere." Roy replied cheekily.

It took a full minute before their eyes got used to the bright industrial flourescent purple light strips hanging over their heads.

Gage didn't deign to reply as both men rose to their trembling feet, using the short stairwell's banister for support. Above their heads, was a wide bright silver ventilation shaft curving away into the ceiling.

Black smoke was slowly oozing out of the grilling.

"Well, " Gage sighed. "You bought us some time at least. Thanks for shoving me over a cliff, Roy."

"Anytime." DeSoto suddenly remembered the HT still strapped around his wrist. He reached up to remove his helmet and mask so he could speak into it.

Johnny's grip suddenly stopped him. "No, Roy.  
At our feet. Don't you see that?"

Roy looked down. A hazy murk was pooling around their ankles. "Smoke?"

"No man. It's yellowish green. Are you color blind or something? That's chlorine gas unless I missed my guess."

Roy was silent behind his mask.

"You are? Oh, geesh. How did you ever get that by the fire department qualifiers?"

"It's not a requirement of the job." Roy shrugged. "Let's just find out where that gas is coming from.  
If there are people still alive in here, this's gonna be real bad for them."

Right then, the hissing of Roy's air bottle, ran out.

"You were saying.." Gage said with a frown.  
"Come on, before you start choking." And he took a deep breath off his own mask before peeling it off to offer it to Roy. "We gotta find those tanks in order to know which direction to go in to get away from them. Maybe we can shut off whatever leak's there."

"If we can. The explosion which destroyed those cars out there in the tunnel may have damaged the cooling lines beyond repair."

"Ever the raging optimist. Come on. My guess is that we've got six minutes of my tank air left before that runs out."

Roy stopped in his tracks. "Wait a minute. This is a rural mountain highway tunnel, isn't it?"

"Yeahhh." he said sarcastically flippant. "We've got lots of pine trees, a biggish lump that looks suspiciously like a mountain. Gee, Roy. What--"

"Hear me out. We're far from any fire station." Roy said brightly in between their mask sharing. "There's gotta be spare air in here somewhere. It's all in the Haz mat manuals."

"It is?"

"Junior, " Roy said craftily smart. "How did you ever get past the fire department qualifiers without knowing that?"

"Oh shush. I just hit my head buddy boy. I'm allowed to forget a few things here."

"Uhh.. That one was kinda important.."

"That's what YOU'RE there for. You're my PARTNER.  
Firemen partners remember things for each other."

"Not THAT often." Roy mumbled under his breath.  
"I seem to recall that I do it more for you than you do for-"

Boomm... came a sound only a short distance away down the access tunnel. The lights flickered.

Both firemen ducked against opposite walls and covered their helmets with their arms.

"Where was that?" Gage asked. "Our tunnel or was that the fuel truck outside?"

"Don't know. It's too hard to tell in here." Roy said,  
peering at the ceiling to make sure it didn't come down on top of them.

"We gotta know. If it's one, the blast may have reopened the way out, if it's the other, any folks left in here are dead and we've no further reason to go in deeper to check for survivors. That was too big to live through."

"Only one way to find out. But we've got our priorities here."  
DeSoto said practically. "If we find those civilian air bottles.  
We can investigate that. If we don't, it's in our best interests to fix or block off that chlorine gas. Six minutes, remember?"

"How can I forget that, Roy?"

"Just checking. Head knock assessment."

"Save it for later." Johnny grumbled. "I feel a lump but it's nothing big. Let's move."

Linking arms, the two paramedic firefighters moved deeper into the well lit tunnel after their goal.

As they went, the greenish heavy gas rose a little higher up their ash dusted legs.

A few minutes later, they broke into a cabinet full of ventilation apparatus using brute force and a fire axe.

"What's the yield on these?" Roy asked of their new white and blue air bottles slung over their arms. Their yellow ones, they had abandoned behind them.

"Says.. twenty five minutes."

"How many do we have?"

"Ten." Johnny counted carefully.

"Sweet. After we deal with the chlorine, let's stock pile them along our route. We may find surv--"

"Roy! Look.." Gage pointed.

A sooty maintenance man was slumped upright against the wall to their left. Surrounding him was a cluster of chlorine coolant tanks. He didn't look conscious.

Gage grabbed a spare air bottle and both ran forward.

Johnny peeled off a glove and felt for a carotid.  
"He's alive." His hand dropped lower. "Breathing."

"Let's get him out of here." Roy said.

"You do that. I'll stay here to see if I can find that gas leak. We've gotta be close." Gage replied.

"I'll meet you by the place we found the air bottles.  
They may have oxygen in a first aid bag behind the controller's desk."

"Try your HT. Maybe that's not so far inside the mountain there. Maybe there's a wall phone."

"I'll check it out. Come on, get him up onto me."  
Roy ordered. He had fitted the air mask of their third tank over their victim's face.

Gage helped DeSoto lift the limp man over a shoulder and wedged him in between Roy's back and the new air bottle. He handed Roy the man's air supply. "Be careful. I don't like this separating idea one bit. Cap's not gonna like it."

"No other way. He comes first.." DeSoto said,  
throwing his helmeted head upwards.

They parted ways.

Gage was swallowed in silence as Roy retreated back the way they had come.

"Ok.. first tank. What do we have here?" he said,  
talking to himself as he bent down to check the pressure guage of the chlorine receptacle.  
"Full. D*mn. Onto the next.."

There were five tanks in the tiny anteroom. None were leaking. "Oh, boy. That leaves a coolant pipe somewhere.  
Not gonna be easy finding that."

Johnny found a flashlight in the utility cabinet and began using it when the next room he wanted to enter,  
didn't light up when he flipped the light switch. "Bingo.."  
he celebrated. "Electrical damage. Bet that pipe's in here."

Gage entered the room.

-  
Roy placed his heavy burden onto the desk itself.  
"Let's keep you away from floor level." He could see murk drifting around his shoes that he could only assume to be more chlorine gas.

He positioned the man onto his back and used a stack of files underneath his shoulders piled high enough so the unconscious man's head flopped back and his airway stayed open.

His attempts to awaken the man failed.

He pulled his walkie talkie out of his jacket pocket.  
"Squad 51 to Engine 51. Come in."

Static splashed instead of clear radio air after the talk button's bleep.

"Squad 51 to Engine 51. We're ok in the south side maintenance tunnel. We have one casualty.  
Over.."

No voices came through.

"Too deep." Roy sighed.

Right then, the lights went off.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo : Chained chlorine tanks.

Photo: Animated gif showing a gas tank leak.

Photo: Roy near a sitting unconscious man against a wall.

Photo: Johnny peering around with a flashlight in daylight.

Photo: A rockslide over a tunnel's mouth.

*  
From: "patti keiper" Date: Thu May 20, 2004 12:32 am Subject: Improvisation

Gage's retinas burned from lack of stimulus.  
He couldn't see four feet in front of his toes.  
"This isn't good.. " mumbled Johnny. "I hope Roy managed to get a hold of a flashlight.." he said, clutching tightly to his own.

He cast his light beam downwards, looking for the telltale chartreuse fog of chlorine hugging the floor. He found nothing off color. Moving to a fusebox, Johnny checked the biggest master circuit breaker that he could see. But it wasn't tripped. "Now why did the lights go off?"

His eyes glanced down to his wide black strapped watch. "It's been....twenty three minutes since we arrived on the fire scene. Could it be the Rural Station Utility Company ending a risk for our growing disaster call?" In hindsight, the move got Gage angry and he began complaining out loud as he walked.  
"Don't they know that there could be motorists still inside the uneffected part of this tunnel? We won't be able to see them well for rescue operations in here, except by firelight and I'm d*mned sure that there isn't much of anything else that can burn beyond the gasoline still inside those cars on the highway." he reasoned.

"You're forgetting one thing.." said a voice behind Gage that was thick with gruffness and fatigue.  
"Chlorine's combustible with metals if it's got water. And heat. Especially with the copper piping running through the ceiling of this maintenance tunnel."

Johnny nearly levitated and whirled around, aiming his light towards the open door of the store room.  
"Sir.. are you ok?" he finally said when he saw that the man was wearing the familiar gray coverall of the highway department.

"I was just about to ask you the same thing, mister."  
replied the scba masked worker who seemed near the age sixty to Gage. "You're on the wrong track,  
sonny. A mountain tunnel is always graded to the south. Any of that leakage you're looking for will flow in that direction instead of pooling where you can see it."

"Thanks.." Johnny said appreciatively. "Might I ask what you're still doing in here? My guess is that during any declared emergency, all console operators should be the first ones to bail out of this tunnel for safety reasons at the first sign of trouble."

"Nothing was declared. There wasn't enough time. Five of us died when the cars went up. I guess momentum kept the truck that started it all skidding long enough to make it to the tunnel's mouth and past it to the outside."

Gage stepped nearer so that they could share illumination as he motioned for the man to follow him back to the controller's booth where Roy had taken refuge with the unconscious worker. "Are you hurt?"

"Not physically.." he snorted, wearily rubbing the back of his neck. "Say, listen. Did you come across another guy dressed like me?  
He's about 5 foot 2. Caucasian, with curly brown hair styled like Mark Spitz?"

"We found him unconscious. What's his name?"

"Benny. He's one of the new kids. He was the first one I told to get the h*ll outta here on account of his age!" shouted the man angrily. "I guess he just doesn't ever listen too well."

Johnny nodded in understanding. "Looks like the chlorine got to him before he could make it out. My partner's with him now. That's where we're going." Johnny said matter of factly. "Hi, I'm Fireman John Gage and I'm with the Los Angeles County Fire Department."

"Joe Dawson." And the man held out his gloved hand to Johnny's. Gage grasped the worker's hand in friendship as well as in a test assessing the man's health and strength. Then he pointed back down the hallway he had used in coming as they walked. "We're almost there.." Johnny said. "I know they're this way past these sealed chlorine tanks."

-----------------------------------------------------------

The lack of illumination that came was so abrupt that Roy almost felt himself lose his sense of balance.

Roy Desoto bent low immediately and took off his gloves. One hand went to the beat in his patient's neck, and the other slipped under his shirt to pause on the rapid rise and fall of respirations he still felt and heard coming from the sooty man.

It was inky. Completely. And Roy felt the darkness press in claustrophobically against his face through the scba mask he wore.

He strained to hear anything useful coming from down the corridor. Dimly,  
Desoto heard a peculiar hissing. ::Equalizing pressure?:: he wondered.. ::It's from somewhere above my head.:: Mentally, he ran through all the possible reasons for pipes in the tunnel.  
::Steam pipes? Coolant conduits? Are the ventilation air shafts reacting to the fire out there? Are the waste management pipes from the wayside rest up the mountain draining out because of the rockslide we encountered earlier?::

Nothing seemed definite nor did anything else leap out suddenly as the most likely answer.

A new sound drew away Roy's attention from waist level. A quiet gurgling from Benny faded into a loud silence.

"Mister?!" Roy shouted, not really expecting an answer in the pitch blackness. His left hand still resting on the man's stomach, fell in height and didn't climb upwards again.

Roy threw away caution and pulled off his mask once his lungs were full. Immediately, his eyes began to burn and water perfusely. ::So, chlorine's in here after all.:: he decided and Desoto promptly forgot about the gas. Screwing his eyes protectively shut, Roy freed the man from his breathing apparatus and listened by his nose and mouth even as he reconfirmed no movement in the man's chest under his palms. ::Figured as much.::

Jamming his own mask under an arm, Roy gave the man a couple of breaths mouth to mouth before rechecking the fluttering pulse in his throat. Then gasping, Roy took ample good air from his own gear for himself before he did it again. And again.

Minutes dragged by and Roy relived some self chastisement; kicking himself mentally for not having any airways or any other useful stuff in his turnout's pockets. On a sudden thought,  
he drew out his pen light from his shirt and he checked for signs of vomit as an explanation for the bubbling he was hearing on all his inhalations. He found nothing abnormal.  
::Pulmonary edema? Let's hope it's just chemically induced.:: Under his anchor hand, the pulse in his victim's neck was growing irregular. : That arrythmia must be from the chlorine. I can't block it all off.::

Another long stretch of seconds passed as Roy considered his options, which were slim to none.

Roy's tank ran out and he quickly switched to the man's still lying abandoned in a pile at his feet. ::Now what? I've no epinephrine or atropine..::

A murky spear of wavering light cut through the haze inside Roy's midnight colored room. "Johnny?! Hurry up. He's respiratory arrested!"

"On the way!" And Johnny's sharp reply was punctuated with echoing footsteps that were music to Roy's ears. Gage's running sounded like a whole calvary's.

Roy finally glanced up in between his breaths as a second shadow slid in next to Johnny's. The lanky paramedic had filed in next to Roy. DeSoto was immediately punished, as a new wave of lances knifed into both of his eyes. "Aghh!" he cried out. "D*mned chlorine gas!"

"Want me to take over?" Gage asked evenly.

"Just find that first aid pack we theorized about earlier.." Roy mumbled as he got a better grip on his patient's face and nose. Desoto retreated back into the shelter of his air mask, coughing.  
But immediately, he shared his tidal store in yet another breath for the very pale young man stretched out beneath him.

"Joe?" Gage asked as he pivoted in the silver haired man's direction. He didn't like the color change occuring in the older maintenance man's cheeks. "Did you hear that?"

"Yeah.. yeah.. uh, one of the ranger boys.  
you know the sierra wilderness types from 110's? ..they left a pretty good one behind for us for just this kind of medical emergency happening in the tunnel.."

"Where is it? Are you all right? You look like you're gonna faint." Johnny said, keeping one glove on Roy's back, the other on Joe's elbow.

"I-I'm fine. I just know Benny's mother. That's all. If he dies, I'm the only one who's a friend enough to break the news. Know what I mean?"  
Joe shuddered, absently bumping his fingers against his faceplate, trying to rub his forehead.

"The kit, Joe.." John ordered. "We need it."

"Oh, uh huh. right. It's right there, John. Under the supe's desk in the corner. But don't we gotta get Benny to a doctor? You two are just firemen.  
And with him not breathin and all, it's gettin real scary..real fast!" he said, his voice rising higher in panic. "Let's just carry him outta here. Come on, I'll do it. I'm bigger than the both of ya. So just tell your buddy ta move out of the way.." Then Joe actually tried to lift Benny up into an arm carry to remove him from under Roy's hands.

Gage snatched him away from the desk quickly.  
"Joe! What the h*ll do you think you're doing!  
Benny's better off right where he is where we can deal effectively with his hypoxia. Just go get the bag."

"But..." the balding man sputtered through his mask.

"It's ok.." Johnny qualified. "We're paramedic firefighters. We can treat him right here. Enough to stabilize him. Then we can think about figuring out a way to get us all out of here. Until Benny's condition falls one way or another, we're staying put!"

Clunk! The big blue bag full of medical supplies landed in Gage's lap. Johnny's pen light found his teeth as he dug through it to the bottom using its meager beam. "This is heavy Roy, I'll just bet that it has--" a clanging sound greeting his ears as his questing fingers found a fair sized oxygen cylinder and a valve wrench tethered on a chain. "..Yep.  
O2." He snatched it out and set up its demand valve, replete with a hard black rubber face mask. "Here. I got an oral out, too." And Gage gave Roy the two pieces of equipment. "Joe, go get my partner a new air tank. That one's getting too low."

Roy gratefully let Joe slide the new scba mask back over his head and face, coughing thickly as the clean air slowly washed away the strongest chlorine fumes he had been suffering eyewise.  
He shook his head to shake the face plate into place vigorously around his temples.

All the while, his hands never missed delivering a breath to Benny using the new positive pressure apparatus they had found.

"Roy?" Johnny asked, checking out the breathless man's eyes with his light for their responses.

"I've still got a bounding carotid on him."

"Thanks for the update. But I was asking about you. How're your eyes? And your chest?" Gage said wrapping a bp cuff over Benny's near arm.

"Both'll pass with a push.." Roy said, his voice starting to grow hoarse and cracky. "I don't think I got a whole lotta chlorine."

"Once we get Benny going again, you're gonna grab some of that 02." Johnny said firmly no nonsense.

"We'll see. So far, he's deserving all of it."  
Roy rasped.

"Step it up then and turn him around, so you guys can share.." Gage quipped half serious.

Gage leaned into Joe and whispered to him out of the corner of his mouth so Roy wouldn't hear him. "Joe.. go stand by Roy and light up his face a little. I wanna see his color."

Joe rose, smiling, but Johnny stopped him with a tight grip. "Do it subtlely or I'll never hear the end of it.." he hissed.

Joe nodded, his earlier panicky reactions finally easing down a little. He moved around the desk to the other side. At Roy's curious glance up at him, Joe remarked, "I wanna see what yer doing.." And he casually aimed the flashlight's rays down on Roy's hands so that its icy white backwash lit up his features.

Johnny's eyes flickered up from the breath sounds, to which he was listening, up to Roy's features and back down again in a crafty scan. He feigned being interested in searching for burns on Benny's bare chest as he asked. "Since when did you start hiding the fact that you've got a couple of broken ribs,  
Roy?"

Desoto looked up in surprise, and the sudden motion made him wince. "How'd you know?"

"Oh.." Johnny said matter of factly, continuing his secondary survey down Benny's pelvis and legs,  
"I kinda knew when I threw Benny here onto your back to get him away from the chlorine containers. You were favoring his weight on your good side. I also noticed you were double timing your mouth to mouth to make up for your shortness of breath and now you got a bit of cyanosis starting up on both your lips that's not from any kind of chilling cause it's not cold in here. Far from. " Johnny tilted his head in question.  
"Which ones did ya crack clear through, Roy?"

Roy stopped concealing his hunched over posture.  
"Floating ribs, left side, bottom three." he sighed painfully.

"Did they get into your spleen?"

"Don't know yet. My shoulders hurt but I think it's from wearing this scba gear for so long. Doesn't feel like I've got any real kind of belly pain yet." Roy said.

Joe frowned. "Say, ah.. how'd uh.. how did he get hurt so bad?"

Johnny and Roy both exchanged knowing looks.

Gage was the one who broke the news.  
"Uh, we were forced to retreat inside from a fuel fire at the tunnel entrance when a rock slide took us by surprise.. Here, gimme that Roy,  
I'll take over breathing for him. Take a break."

Joe paled even more and sat down on his rump into a nearby chair. "You mean we're sealed in here with that raging inferno out there threatening to burn the cement wall in right through to us?"

Roy gingerly set aside the over coat he had peeled off. His scba tank was nestled in between his knees. He looked almost comical wearing just the face gear in a blue paramedic's shirt that was torn and ripped in a dozen places from the fall he had taken. "That's putting it in a nutshell.." he grimaced, feeling out the painful locations of his own rib breaks.

Johnny was quick to optimism,, "Uh, that's if we can't find another way outta here." Gage glared at Roy.. Then he snapped rapidly into a sham of counseling charm. "Joe, there is another way out of here.." he prompted.  
"Almost has to be. This is one h*lluva big mountain.  
Right, Benny?!" he added shouting into the young man's ear.  
An answering stomach belch from his artificial respiration came out in reply. "Good boy.." Johnny said, patting the unresponsive man's face. He had done so to break Mr. Dawson out of his bystander funk as much as to test for any telltale responsiveness in Benny.

Joe's eyes stopped glassing over in emotional shock and he actually stifled a smirk over the odd humored joke Johnny shared about his coworker. "Yeah, there's bunches of ways outta here. What does the D.O.T. look like? We're far from being a bunch of numb skulls. We built plenty of bolt holes into this monstrosity.." he said expansively waving his hands up at the tunnel's infrastructure arching all around them.

"Which way to the nearest?" Roy buzzed hoarsely, barely loud enough to be heard through his air mask.

"Down fifty meters south, right fork, three doors on your right, then up the stairwell to the plateau overlooking the valley. It's the same route we take every month. It leads up to the radio tower." Joe rattled off.

Roy smiled. "We could sure use clean line of sight. Our HTs aren't working down here." he said.

Joe's eyes got bigger and he sat up straighter in his chair. "Well why didn't you tell me before that your radio jobbies weren't functioning. We gotta phone right here." And he opened up the drawer to the left of Johnny's knee, displaying a red emergency colored hand receiver phone that had been stuffed into it. "We use this to report any newly sparked forest fires while we're working the span. The boss says it connects with a fire chief or someone like that, down in the city."

Gage sighed.

And so did Benny.

Johnny's face popped wide open. "Benny?"  
he said, lifting the demand valve away. "Can you hear me?" he asked. He slid his hands out of the way just in time to see Benny spit out the oral airway that was gagging him.

Roy saw that he didn't need to be tipped over for nausea. "Benny?"

The young man groaned at the sting of chlorine fumes he started feeling in his eyes, nose and mouth while Johnny quickly strapped Benny's scba gear back on him with one change; he stuffed a balled nasal cannula line inside the young man's mask,  
leaving it in a knot under the man's nose, set to a light flow, as a breathing booster. Johnny watched as Benny lapsed into an adequately respiring but unconscious stupor similar to the state that he had been in when they had first found him. Johnny reinserted another oral airway carefully to avoid spasms.

Gage fitted the demand valve's working end to a new feeder mask and handed it out instantly to Roy. "Start clearing your chest out, partner. Looks like we've quite a hike coming up real soon." Johnny grinned.

He picked up the landline phone to contact L.A. ::I've waited a long time to relay our status in to Rampart and the firecrews still working on the fuel truck. Cap's gonna smile bigger than the whole state of California when he hears from us:  
he smirked.

He winked at Joe Dawson and was very happy to see the older man relaxed enough himself to wink back.

Unknown to all of them, the hissing from above,  
grew louder.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo : A tunnel fire and a schematic of its ventilation system.

Photo: Roy and Johnny working on a victim.

Photo: A man being ventilated mouth to mouth through a pocket mask.

Photo: A burning highway bridge in daylight with brown smoke.

Photo: Two gray coverall-ed men wearing SCBA in a flaming stairway.

*  
From: "Cassidy Meyers"  
Subject: Deliverance.  
Date: Tue May 25, 2004 8:48 pm - 2048 (PDT)

"How's Benny doing, John?" asked Joe Dawson.  
"He- he-he.. still looks kinda sick ."

Johnny Gage rechecked the amount of oxygen left in the ranger's tank by reading the valve by penlight as he said. "Well.. he was awake enough to feel us fussing with his face and fight the airway for a bit. That's a good sign. It'll be up to Rampart Hospital to decide whether or not he'll come down with complications once we get him to our docs there by helicopter. I'll be on the line with one of them in just a minute or so." he nodded.

Joe's dirty face beamed. "Outta sight."

Roy coughed, splinting his side with an elbow to ease the pain as his ribs protested.  
He couldn't quite hide the new agony.

Gage looked up. "That reminds me. " he said,  
shouting through his SCBA gear. He held up an incriminating finger at DeSoto. "You're victim number two, pally. Get a vitals set on yourself..." he ordered,  
peering at Roy's face in analysis. "Or... I can do it if you think you're too laid up to manage."

"I'll manage. Just talk.." Roy said hoarsely. "The O2's working." he said, taking in another shot of oxygen from the positive pressure valve. "My head's clearing now and there's no more blue here." he said waving a few fingernails under the torchlight in his lap. "My ribs aren't flailed."

Gage squinted, appraising Roy for a long moment and DeSoto was smart enough not to look away.

Johnny saw that the vitality in his partner's eyes remained steady and unwavering. "Ok. The job's yours."

The indian paramedic turned his pointing arm towards Dawson. "How about you? Any knocks, bumps I should know about that you didn't share earlier?" he asked. The tone in his voice held a partially serious jest at Roy for doing the same sin.

Roy rolled his eyes, unamused, and didn't rise to the bait as he began shifting in his chair to get comfortable enough to take a BP reading on himself.

"Pick up the phone, Mr. Gage, and call us in. Your casualty number ...is gonna be only two.." Joe said defiantly, holding up that count before Johnny's face and shaking it. "I'll be watching Benny for ya so your partner can rest."

The rugged tunnel man sat down in the desk chair by Benny's head to check the young man's mask's seal around Gage's jury rigging and he began staring at the shallow rise and fall of Benny's chest to pointedly ignore Gage,  
ending the discussion.

Gage was satisfied. He picked up the red landline.  
"This is Squad 51 of the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Emergency. I've updated fire information with two people injured in this tunnel's operations base." he shouted loud enough for his voice to carry into the phone through his face plate.

The voice on the other end rapidly acknowledged Johnny's call sign and he was immediately patched through to L.A. and onto Rampart Hospital once he had relayed enough information to the fire dispatcher to tell Cap and Batallion 14 of their status. Gage heard the call frequency click into a familiar mode as it rang the red wall phone near Dixie McCall's emergency desk.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

The furry voiced RN looked up in surprise from a coffee mug when the rare critical use line began ringing. She padded over and hefted the phone's receiver. "Rampart Emergency."  
She cocked her head as she listened closely as she recognized Johnny's voice. " Johnny!  
Are you four in a safe location? Is there anything you need me to tell the chief out there?... Ok. ..ok. Got it. Now, what do you have? I'm set here." she said snatching up a pencil and pad for note taking.

As she did so, she flagged down an orderly to go fetch the nearest doctor to report to the call.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Johnny bent down to his note pad under penlight and read his data.

"Dixie, it's chlorine gas on both victims one and two.  
Victim One is an unconscious male who's approximately nineteen years of age. He was briefly respiratory arrested but now he's breathing on 6 L's of O2 via SCBA. No trauma. Vitals are : BP 88/64, pulse 120, respirations are 22 and his lungs are wet on both sides. No signs of aspiration. Victim Two. It's Roy, and he's got possible fractures of all the lower left lateral floating ribs, sustained in a fall. He denies lung or abdominal involvement but he's showing a strong positive for crepitus. Dix's he's been oriented times four throughout and he's now on fifteen liters O2. He's dealing with some upper pulmonary tract swelling that also seems to be effecting his throat and larynx. I'd say his exposure was around two minutes despite having tanked air. He had to do some resuscitation. Victim One's duration with the chlorine is unknown. Roy's vitals are : 120/74, pulse 90 and respirations are shallow due to pain. Color is now good on both. Uh,, just a side note, we've only rudimentary gear, a ranger's pack, basic life."

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Dixie studied her note pad, writing furiously as Johnny talked into the red receiver cocked on her shoulder.  
"10-4, Johnny. Hold on, Joe's here."

Dr. Early peered over Dixie's back as he took the phone, reading. "Johnny. How bad's the fire? Are you going to be able to extricate yourselves soon? The faster you're all out of that gas, the better I'll feel." he said, chewing on his pencil.

##Soon, doc. A man with us knows a safe way out. We'll carry the young man out on a door if we have to. He and I can manage ok and Roy's ambulatory.##

Joe Early nodded, despite of only being tied to the paramedic through a telephone wire. "If you can, get a good look in your medical pack.  
If it's a standard forest rescue ranger's bag,  
it should have IV's and a bee sting kit inside.  
Use that kit's epinephrine on the teenager. Give him 1 mg. IV push of that if it's 1/10,000, into an IV of normal saline, then set it TKO. It may bring him around enough to stabilize him for the trip out."

For Roy, if you need to, 5 mg's MS, IM. The bag oughta have that, too. I know the head ranger on that mountain who's a paramedic. Make sure Roy drinks nothing by mouth. Not until he's evaluated. Chlorine turns to hydrochloric acid in the mucosal tissues when exposed to even a slight amount of water so be aware of that and watch for signs of choking. It may develop fast in both your victims. Watch your step around any fire hoses, too. Water fog may be enough to cause further burns in the lungs because of the chlorine sitting in them."

Joe rubbed his lips. "Oh, and be sure to take out all of your loose pocket change." he added with a slight grin of embarrassment.

Dixie was only puzzled.

-  
"Pocket change?" Roy coughed. He was near enough to be able to hear the voice on the other end of the phone.

Gage shushed him as Joe Early elaborated, his quiet calm voice filling the dark smoky circle of space around all four men. The flashlight set on the table between them fizzled fitfully as it struggled to stay lit in the smoke.

The paramedics and Joe Dawson hung on Early's every word.

##I've had people before stuck in a chlorine cloud. With a hidden complication. ## the doc went on. ##The chlorine grew concentrated enough on the scene to cause the copper in the pennies in their jeans to spontaneously ignite their clothes. So get rid of your coins or risk getting a hot seat. Literally. Silver change suffers the same effect. Only they go off later on. So get rid of those, too.##

Joe Dawson hastily flung his vending machine money away into the darkness. Where they landed on the floor,  
little fires popped and erupted as their substance burned under the layer of green chlorine hanging over the floor.

Hastily, Joe got Benny's pockets cleared, too.

And Roy and Johnny rapidly did the same self purging. They all flinched when the coins rolling around them, caught flame and melted in noisy tiny explosions.

Gage sighed in relief. "We're ok, doc. That was very good advice. Thanks."

##No problem. Let me know updates at the slightest changes as you go topside when your walkie talkies start working again, ok? ##

"10-4, doc." And Gage repeated his medical orders back to Dr. Early quickly.

##Good luck.## Joe said, and the phone in Johnny's hand clicked off.

Gage quipped. "That Doctor Early,.. He's a regular 007, you know that.. exploding pocket change.. Geesh."  
Then on a thought. "Say,.. I could have a little fun for the future knowing that. Next time Chet and I are in a chlorine spill, I think I'm not gonna warn him."  
He bent with industry to get his IV, laced with epi, going on Benny.

Joe Dawson split a gut.

Roy found a second bee kit, smiling. "There's more than one of these."

"Good. Put your name on it. If you get yourself wet, you're gonna need it." Johnny said seriously. "Man, first I've ever heard. Firemen avoiding water vapor like the plague. I wonder if Cap knows about it."

"I'm sure he does.." Roy chuckled, his laryngitis staying thick. He wrapped up the O2 and put it away for later use into the blue medical bag and put back on his air mask. "We're under extenuating circumstances.  
Normally, we aren't stuck under a chlorine gas cloud for long enough periods to worry about it. And any wash downs conducted are always done under safe air conditions so no dangerous amounts of acid are ever formed enough before they're washed away entirely."

"Yeah, but it's still weird. Being temporarily allergic to water.." Gage snorted.

"If you can put it that way.." Roy agreed. "The allegory fits. In a sense, Benny and I ARE sensitive for the time being."

"Ok.." Joe said suddenly. "Does your sweat count as water?  
If it does, I'm not waiting around to find out the effects.  
Benny, let's go." and he picked up the young man into his arms. "I'm moving us out. Now." he said firmly as he grabbed the boy's air tank from the floor as well, and slung it over his shoulder around them both.

DeSoto hastily handed the older worker the IV bag Gage had begun on Benny while Johnny snatched up the blue bag quickly to keep the man from ripping the oxygen tubing off the cylinder inside.  
"Slow down! Don't pull out Benny's oxygen!"  
Johnny said. "Joe! Roy can't move that fast."

"Yes I can.." Roy said, painfully rising from the chair.

"Oh. Uh. Ok. Guess that means you can give yourself your own morphine. Here." Johnny said, handing over the capped syringe to his partner with his one free hand.

Then he was yanked away by the stretched cannula tubing between Joe, Benny and the ranger bag, into the darkness.

DeSoto shook his head, amused even in crisis as he rolled up his turnout sleeve as he walked to inject himself into the meaty part of his forearm.

He shuddered when the metal needle from the injection tube evaporated into flame as it hit the floor after he was finished.

The four men moved down the dark cracked tunnel, comforted only by the small nimbus of torchlight as it swirled in the chlorine around their ankles.

They reached a junction where the ceiling hissing was louder.

"Uh oh. That's water I'll bet." Joe said, pointing upwards. "That d*mned chlorine's eating all the pipes!"

"Oh, I get it, acid baths for everyone.." Gage said sarcastically. "Those pipes copper?"

"Don't ask.." Joe said, gently cradling the comatose Benny a little more protectively in his arms.

They walked a little faster past the area.

Joe paused in the darkness. "Here. There's a stairwell."

"How far up?" Gage wanted to know.

"Again... D--"

"Don't ask.." Roy parroted simultaneously,  
smiling grimly.

Joe opened the door into the landing and looked up.

Right then, the pipes in the ceiling gave way and let loose a flood of water.

The older man and Johnny leaped into the safety of the stairwell but Roy was a little slower because of his injury and medication and got water onto his arm as he jumped.

The forearm on his turnout began to smoke from newly formed hydrochloric acid.

"Ahhh!" and he pulled his arm up out of his sleeve and inside his jacket,  
while Johnny pulled the acid singed material away from Roy's body with his coat halligan. "Joe! Close the door behind us. Roy, don't move! I got it!"

DeSoto froze in place where he lay sprawled on the concrete steps, breathing painfully in high pitched wheezes of panic as he remained still and watched his jacket bubble and steam.

Johnny reached into the ranger bag and pulled out some clothes shears. Ruthlessly,  
he cut off the smoking sleeve and it dropped to the ground. Then he knelt, cupping his hands around Roy's face plate, "You ok?  
Roy? I got it off. Can you still breathe ok?"

For several numbing seconds, Roy couldn't reply. Then his helmeted masked head nodded.  
"It didn't get to me. And my mask kept out the water vapor."

Joe Dawson reported out loud, too. "Benny's still ok. He's breathing the same."

Gage, didn't doubt the man, but placed a hand on the teenager's stomach anyway subconsciously in a check. "We were lucky." he panted.  
"Come on. Let's get to the top. Joe, if you get tired. We'll trade. I may be scrawny, but I'm strong.  
I can carry Benny.."

"You just go right on playing bellhop. I'm doing fine."  
Joe said, barging past the two paramedics. He started climbing the stairs strongly. "I can carry him all day if I have to. I owe it to him and his ma to do my absolute best." his voice echoed.  
He turned around and just waited for the other two to catch up to him.

Johnny Gage gave Roy DeSoto a hand up from where he curled on the floor. "Wow. With devotion like that, I'm surprised you never joined the fire department, Dawson." he said.

"Not enough pay.." spat the older man.

"Really?" Gage said, stopping in his tracks.

"Yeah.." Roy gasped. Then he staggered.

"Roy?" Johnny startled, grabbing him.

"I'm ok, it's just the morphine."

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah. I'm not shocky. Come on, let's go." Roy insisted. "Benny can't be delayed and it's gonna take a while for any help to get to us once we're out on the mountain. It's probably getting dark already." he coughed,  
and immediately doubled over in pain.

Hefting the blue bag and its precious tether of oxygen from Benny a little higher on his shoulder, Johnny pulled Roy's still sleeved arm over his neck. "Easy. Don't drop your head like that, you're gonna make yourself black out. Now take a big breath.  
That's it. Ready? Ok. Up. First this stair. That's it.  
Now the next. Roy, pick your right leg up a little higher. Ok, now you're doing it. Good."

Slowly, the four men made their way up out of the heart of the burning tunnel and soon, they found themselves underneath the scented canopy of a spectacular boreal forest of slash pines.

They all threw off their air masks gratefully and sucked in cool earthy air that was tinged with tannin and a hint of rain.

Gage's heart sank. "We gotta go higher.  
The talkies won't reach anything under here.  
These trees are huge. And thick. Joe, where's the nearest ridge?"

Joe turned around in a circle with his limp burden, Johnny keeping pace, as he caught his bearings. Then he threw his filthy haired head upwards. "Up there. That's Devil's Head Trail. A ranger station's at the top. With any luck, ...Tim Cassidy's still there."

"Who? " Roy asked, resting against a spicy tree trunk.

"Tim Cassidy.." Joe elaborated. "He's the assistant head ranger. A real short wicked kinda guy at times but he's got a real level head. He'll help us out in a flash. Who knows, maybe Julie Beck's up there. She's working today."

"Julie Beck?"

Joe filled him in. "Remember the medic the doc said he knew who packed out this medical bag for us? Well she's it."

Gage's mouth fell open. "That ranger paramedic's a..a...woman?"

"Yep." Joe said distractedly, still holding Benny.

"And she's a ranger?"

"What's the matter with your ears, John?"  
Joe asked quizzically. "You going deaf with fatigue? Yeah, a real Sierra Nevada forest ranger. One of the first ever stationed at Devil's Head. You'll like her."

"I'll bet.." Johnny said, warming to the idea.

"Does that tower have a radio?" Roy asked, still catching his breath. " We may still be out of HT range of Cap and the chief from up there. Our truck crash's on the other side of the mountain where we might not be able to reach them."

"It's got one. You see, that station up there is the state's best lightning research base in the entire country.." Joe said proudly.

"Lightning?" Gage's smile fell away.

"Yeah, happens all the time. Especially this time of year. Something to do with the way the weather patterns fall around these parts."  
Joe said.

"How long will it take for us to reach it?"  
Roy asked.

"Oh, about ten minutes. It's just up that trail that way."

"What trail?" Gage said, seeing only massive boulders and lumpy juts of steel colored outcrops with no level surfaces underneath the monster pines.

"That one. See the sign?" Joe pointed.  
"It's right up that way. It's not far at all."

Johnny's hope for an easy rescue was dashed. A tiny weathered, tilted wooden side proclaimed the trail's head up the mountain.  
The way was difficult and gnarled by car sized playdoh ball stepping stones.

"I see it, Mr. Dawson." he said unhappy. "But first, set Benny down. I wanna get another set of vitals. On him and Roy both."

"Ok.." Joe said cheerfully. And he gently set Benny's quiet length down on a giant mossy log near them.

"Better sit down, Roy, while I get yours next."  
Johnny said, taking the teenager's carotid pulse as he studied his wrist watch. "Looks like we got a long couple of hours ahead of us. Try to catch your breath back." Johnny told him.

Roy just hung his head and he let the morphine take over. It swept over his body in a rush and took the edge off his pain. ::Just a little. Only,...just :: he thought wearily. ::I wish I could take a nap like Benny here. Right now, I don't feel like I'm much use to anyone. I hope I can make it to the top of all that.::

--------------------------------------------------------------

Photo : Dixie listening to a red phone.

Photo: A firefighter's jacket smoking with acid.

Photo: SCBA'd firefighters supporting a man on a spiral stair.

Photo: A ranger's tower high on a rocky cliff with stairs.

Photo: A steep rocky trail under pine trees.

Photo: A height of stairs going up a cliff.

Photo : A ranger showing a child a jar of lake water.

*  
From: Jeff Seltun Date: Thu May 27, 2004 8:35 pm Subject: Search and Rescue..

Gage gently shook DeSoto's shoulder, "Hey... Roy.."

"Huh?" he replied, bleary eyed from the depths of a deep nap. He looked up to see Johnny wearing a stethoscope and the oxygen was out again at his knees. Roy felt his face to find the bag's mask there on a flow and his shirt was flung open, his chest exposed to the growing chill of the late afternoon forest. "What happened? Was I out?" he wheezed.

"Nope. You came around to a rub with me barely touching you. My guess is the pain killer's messing with you a little bit. I only got this on ya to make waking up a little easier. You were sleeping more than soundly." Gage said, repositioning the mask over Roy's nose and mouth absently.  
"So I took another vitals set a minute ago."

"What are they now?" Roy asked, tossing a careless hand towards the stethoscope around Johnny's neck.

"Better. BP 124/ 78. Resps normal at 14."  
Johnny replied. "Your pupils are sluggish though because of the morphine."

Roy looked down at himself and started buttoning up his shirt. He glanced up in a question about the rest of the infomation concerning his chest.

Gage waved a dismissing hand and turned off the O2 on Roy. "I was only listening to that edema you've still got. Benny's showing the same thing. Only a little worse. He says he's bubbling on the left side but he refused to use any of this." Johnny said,  
rapping on the O2 tank with grimy knuckles.  
"You still have no signs of a tension pneumothorax showing up. Start counting your lucky stars, pally."  
Roy sat up a little higher against the log he was slumped against. His ribs ached only dully and it no longer felt like a vise was wrapping around him. "Benny's awake?"

"Umm hmm and hungry." Gage nodded, taking Roy's pulse and scribbling his reading down on his notepad. "Seems all this fresh air out here's all he needed to make a fantastic recovery.  
He's already asked when we can begin heading up to the ranger's station. I told him just as soon as you felt like walking again."

"How long has it been since we stopped?" Roy wondered. He couldn't tell from his muted down aches at all.

"Oh, about forty five minutes or so."

Roy struggled to his feet, pulling off the mask.  
"An hour?! My G*d, Johnny. Cap must be outta his skull with worry about us."

"No he's not." said Gage coolly. "Remember my conversation with Dixie at all? She said she'd relay our game plan to escape to the engine crew and the chief. I told her that we had a sure fire route out of there with no possibility of any problems cropping up."

"You're forgetting the water pipe bursting in on us making all that acid rain out of the air."

"That didn't get you. Only your jacket. That wasn't a problem at all." Johnny countered mildly, staying calm.

"Close enough!" Roy flared. He immediately regretted his reaction when his ribs reawoke into agony. "Sorry, I'm not myself."

"I noticed." Johnny said, the slight smile never leaving his face. He put away the mask and tubing into its pouch and began repacking the portable tank into the blue satchel. "Come on,  
gimme the arm on your good side and I'll help ya to your feet. You can sleep all you'd like once we get there."

"Can't we wrap me up first?" Roy asked hoarsely.

"You won't be able to breathe freely enough for all the exercise we'll be doing climbing those rocks on the trail. You'd never make it."

"What makes you so sure I'll make it now?"  
said DeSoto with a foggy head.

"Because of the sheer fact that you're arguing with me about it, Roy. Anyone truly off their feed would never do that."

Roy's stomach rumbled right then, betraying him.

"So that makes four of us who're starving."  
said Joe, moving nearer to the two paramedics when he finally saw Roy maneuvered to his feet.  
"Man, I hope the tower's got good chow. I've never been up there."

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute." Roy started up again. "If that's true, how do you know this is the right way to get there?" he said tossing a head at the tree log sign declaring the existence of a path in front of them.

"Those d*mned stairs tell me so, mister fireman."  
Joe said with a wink, pointing.

Roy's eye finally focused on a precarious flight of maroon stained wooden staircases meandering through tangles of boulders and into a chasm.  
He could see them all the way to the top of the peak to which they were heading. "Oh." DeSoto muttered weakly. "Didn't see those."

"Not surprising with that shot giving you a close run in with the sandman." Dawson retorted. "Benny says he can make it ok without help. How about you? I offer you a shoulder up."

Roy shook his head after pushing off the tree he was leaning on. "That trail's single file.  
I promise I'll sit down if it gets to be too much."

"I'll be the one right behind ya." Joe said, grabbing up Roy's tossed aside turnout.

Johnny watched Joe speak quietly with Benny,  
offering the young man Roy's jacket for warmth.  
Gage leaned in dangerously to DeSoto. "Want mine?" he mumbled.

"No. I'm not cold."

"Ok.. ok.. just doing those weird first aid things you already know about." he said smirking. "Race ya.." and he dashed off after Benny and Joe with the blue bag and both helmets clattering around the air bottle he had forgotten to take off his back.

Roy shook his head ruefully and followed after.

About half way up the mountain, it began to rain.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Ho.. in the tower!" Gage cried out as they mounted the final stairway in the driving rain. The sun, to the west,  
was fleeing. "I've injured people!"

Tim Cassidy and Julie Beck both, came out of the glass enclosure of the watch tower and out onto the balcony. They saw the four men and immediately recognized all the fire gear despite chlorine staining and water marks. "Coming!" said the red long haired woman.

Julie Beck immediately grabbed hold of the teenager and helped him up the final steps into the dry interior of the ranger tower. Tim Cassidy, took over for Johnny and helped Roy out.

Tim recognized Joe right away. "Mr. Dawson?  
That truck crash was in your tunnel?"

"Don't you two monitor your radios?" said the maintenance man harshly. "Of course that was my tunnel. The fire department scanner should have told you that right off."

"They had to be relocated before they could mobilize the two of us down there."

Gage said, "What?"

Julie Beck nodded. "Mr. Gage. Captain Stanley told us you were coming. I'm Julie Beck,  
head rescue ranger and this is Tim Cassidy,  
my local side kick. I'll answer all your questions just as soon as we've taken care of your injured partner and Joe's tunnel worker first.  
I wanna get the four of you out of those wet things and into dry clothes." And she opened a locker and pulled out a box full of spare civilian fall clothes in plaids woven with thick, warm wool.

Roy's teeth were chattering so loudly that Gage didn't protest. He went right for them as Roy began peeling down. "Just how long is it supposed to rain a-anyway?" DeSoto asked.

"Not long. This is just an isolated cloud front. Maybe... another few minutes. Then the real show starts." she replied cheekily.

"What real show?"

A sharp vivid crack of purple lightning struck very nearby and hit the rod on top of the tower. Thunder jolted and made everyone except the two rangers jump.

Tim Cassidy smiled. "That one. Happens every two days or so right around this time after the sun goes down."

The rain, as quickly as it had come, departed.  
But the lightning only grew stronger and happened more often.

A machine whirred into life on the ranger desk that reacted similar to a seismograph but it went ignored as the two rangers helped Roy and Benny change and get under blankets.

Johnny took the opportunity to get his bearings on just how high up they really were.

A spectacular 360 degree angled view of jutting buttes and a broad pine valley filled the look out and the sight took Gage's breath away. To the east,  
was a dark smudge of purple pink smoke and a tongue of fire a mile wide. "A wild fire?" he gasped.  
"Is that why rescue operations at the tunnel were halted?"

Julie Beck could only nod sadly. "Yes. The truck fire started up a minor brush burn, but then this lightning did the rest. The whole valley's about to go up."

"What about us?" Gage asked.

"Oh, we'll be safe enough up here. There's nothing but bare rock around us for a quarter of a mile.  
Only lightning can reach us. And we're far too insulated to be effected by that." Julie said.

Cassidy got on the short wave radio to let the distant fire stations know that Gage and DeSoto and their victims had made it to Devil's Head.

Roy looked up from his blanket wraps where he sat on the couch. "Johnny, I don't like it. We only had two brush assignments called out. And that bluff over there looks really bad."

Beck had abandoned the view Johnny was transfixed by and was digging inside another locker for all of her medical gear and medications.  
"Captain Stanley thought the same thing. He didn't know the condition of Roy and Benny here so he ordered your crewmates to hike in to meet you here. Lopez and Stoker and Kelly should be arriving in about ten minutes, last radio call."

"Can I talk to them?" Gage said, surprised yet again. "They might be in trouble."

"They're fine. They're not even in that threatened valley, Mr. Gage. The lightning will knock out their HTs for a while so you're gonna have to trust me as to their ETA. They're here because I've formally asked for help." Ranger Beck said.

"What for?" asked Johnny. "Not for us, surely."

Tim Cassidy shook his head. "Not you."  
"There's a kid's camp at Happy Hollow along the Verdigris River and they haven't had time,  
like you four did, to get out of the way. On the last transmission from the camp counselors,  
seven kids are still unaccounted for after the camp was evacuated."

Julie laid out her paramedic gear and two fresh O2 tanks for Johnny. Then she rose and hefted a laden backpack full of climbing and extrication gear and set it by the door.  
"You can contact your hospital base station using that short wave radio right there.  
I've IV's in plenty and I've also most of the narcotics you fellas are used to from your squad drug box.  
Make use of them and your doctors." she said and she reached for some rain gear.

"Wait a minute," Roy said. "Are you and Mr.  
Cassidy planning on going out there?"

"We have to. No one but us knows the mountains as well as we do. If anyone can find those kids, it's us."

Gage turned from his inspection of all the medical supplies and he quickly got to his feet.  
"Hang on a minute here. Don't you think that we'll have a better chance at finding those kids if we wait until our engine crew gets here?"

"Perhaps." Tim said thoughtfully, pausing by the door.

"Then let's do that. The guys aren't slackers when it comes to rappelling and rural extrication operations." Johnny insisted.

"All right, we'll wait.." Julie decided, tossing her auburn shoulder length hair out of her eyes.  
"Why don't you fill us in as to your injured friends'  
conditions here and we'll see about getting dinner on the stove, all right?"

"Deal.." Johnny replied.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Fifteen minutes later, Stoker, Kelly and Lopez,  
with full brush fire gear, drip torches and portable fire shelters, arrived at the ranger tower from the steep trail's steps.

The wind was hot and no longer smelled like rain,  
only ozone and sky bound electricity.

"Man, Gage..what a trip in.." came Kelly's puffing, excited and very welcome voice. "Is DeSoto all right? And the other guy? L.A. didn't tell us much from Dixie's report from Rampart."

"Yeah, nothing like worrying to make a guy run faster.." Lopez said, ducking into the ranger's tower and out of the raging summer night wind. "So spill the details."

"They're fine guys. Roy's got a few broken ribs and Benny here's over some chlorine gas exposure. Nothing dire." Johnny reported.

Stoker didn't say anything at all but went straight for the short wave radio and hefted the microphone. "Station 51 to Base.  
We're situated. Gage and his victims are all right. The new fire's completely blocked the foot of the trail up leading here so if you send more men, have them come up an alternate route. Over.."

##10-4, Station 51. We read you. Stand by for air support's report on the spread of the ridge fire before you head out with the park rangers on your SAR mission. They offer its ETA in ten minutes.##

"Standing by.." Mike replied.

Julie was fast at handing out sandwiches and pop cans to everyone in the room as the lightning continued to crackle in a dry rage around them. Soon, they were all eating.

Everyone ate but Johnny, who didn't until he reached Rampart with his update and new medical data on Roy and Benny. Dr. Early was still working on the night shift and he was eager to learn the details. Then,  
he dismissed Gage until rescue parties could reach the camp kids after breaking through the growing fire dipping into the valley below the rangers station.

Benny went right to sleep. But Roy, feeling much better, joined in on the plan of attack at getting to the camp before the larger fire got there.

Tim seemed confident. "We've been down to this camping ground before. Earlier this spring. When a little girl went missing from her parent's trailer. Julie and I were called to be guides along the river bank."

"Did you ever find her?"

Tim hung his head. "Yes, she washed over the falls three days later."

"I'm sorry." Roy said. "Thanks for the clothes."

"No problem. We always keep spares in case a rainfall catches hikers coming up here by surprise."  
he smiled. "How are you doing? Sounds like the gas really did a number on your voice."

"I sound worse than I feel, believe me."

"What's Benny's etiology?" Julie asked from as she took Benny's blood pressure from where he slept on the couch under the watch windows.  
"I placed him back on some light 02 since he was breathing a little fast."

"Simple suffocation. He turned around right away with a few minutes of active ventilation. That edema you're hearing, my partner says, isn't aspirant. It's only a chemical fluid reaction from the chlorine.  
A little albuterol should clear that up."

"And we got permission to use that Miss Beck."  
Johnny piped up from where he and Tim and the other three firefighters were still planning their plan of attack to go hike down into the valley after the missing kids.

"Understood." Julie said aloud, then she looked thoughtfully at Roy. "That pain med still working?"

Roy decided not to lie. "No. But I'll manage.  
I may be needed on this hike, too. Having seven potential victims leaves us a little short handed in the paramedic department."

"It does." Julie said evenly. "But I could call down and have your captain ground you based on my findings."

"Please.. don't. I have kids of my own and the thought of anybody else's lost on this mountain just turns my stomach."

"Amen to that, Roy.." Lopez piped up.

"He's going.." Kelly said in no short terms to Beck.  
"We'll watch him for ya and I'll personally make sure he doesn't do anything stupid climbing."

Julie Beck smiled. "How can I resist an offense like that. You know you firefighters are really something,  
you know that?"

"I already know that.." Joe Dawson piped up. "They saved Benny when I thought he was a goner for sure."  
he said from where he was watching Julie care for his young coworker.

Mike Stoker motioned Johnny to the radio.  
"Gage, it's Cap."

"Fireman John Gage." Johnny said into the receiver,  
knowing it was being routed through L.A.'s monitors.

##Gage, here's the latest report. Seven confirmed missing. Last seen kayaking by the north shore of the lake near the river's mouth. Now the counselors think the kids saw the fire coming even as the thunderstorm broke down on them and they believe the children may be trying to head for higher ground,  
to get away from the flashfloods.##

"But the ridge fire's up there." Johnny said despite himself.

##I know that Johnny. And that's gonna be your conundrum. Plan accordingly. The park rangers with you assure me that they can negotiate around this fire and the cliffs enough to reach the areas the kids might be in without excessively putting you all in danger. Now I'm ordering Stoker to remain behind with your injured civilian while the rest of you go on this SAR assignment. Think Roy can handle that?##

Gage replied wryly. "I believe he can do whatever he puts his mind to, Cap."

##Good enough. Now Mr. Cassidy says that our radio contact will be sporatic at best during this rescue operation so rely on visual flares ok?  
I'll be on the west side of the valley working in with a staging team and I want you five with the rangers to work across the east side in a search pattern. I have ample brush fire crews moving in and three water choppers are now available for your sole usage should you need an emergency water drop in a hot spot.##

"Cap, I.."

##You five'll do fine. I've all the confidence in the world that you and the rangers can pull this off.  
Make the department proud and impress the Sierra team. You're all those children've got.  
Engine 51, out.##

Tim Cassidy let the closing line click off the air and he shoved the hand mic out of the way.  
"I can hardly wait to meet this captain of yours Gage. He sounds like quite a man."

"He is. Believe me, he is.." Kelly quipped.

"Are we ready to go?" Marco asked.  
"I've got six bottles of spare air and an O2 tank in each backpack along with your portable medical gear, Miss Beck."

"Thank you. And yes, I do feel we're set here. Mr. Gage? DeSoto? Anytime you are."

And Julie Beck indicated the door as a wild stab of lightning filled the sky.

--------------------------------------------------------

Photo: Tim Cassidy forest ranger walking at you.

Photo : Julie Beck, forest ranger in desert.

Photo: Purple colored lightning bolt at night.

*  
From : Sam Iam Subject : [EmergencyTheaterLive] And then there were five.. Sent : Saturday, May 29, 2004 2:31 AM

Mike Stoker spoke quietly from where he was leaning against the radio transmitter table on the desk. "Benny's on an I.V. Should he be left with me, like this, while having one in?"

"We're not going anywhere just yet. " DeSoto said. "And your answer's no. A patient with an intravenous line can't be left unattended by a paramedic. Looks like protocol's rubbing off on you pretty well, Stoker." and he grinned.

"I just remembered arguments between you and Johnny a few years ago about how pointless call prioritizing was for a while there in the system." Stoker remembered. "And Roy brought up that point about I.V.s and how it ties up service unit availability."

"How can I forget?" Chet snorted. "It was the first time I've ever seen Gage passionate about anything."

"Oh ha ha.." Johnny said with a glib expression.  
"The way we got calls that summer WAS stupid.  
I still remember that construction worker dying of a heart attack when I was working overtime for Station Eight's just because we didn't have a rescue squad and a defibrillator there on time.  
I was so angry that 110 was busy with just a simple syncope case who's M.D. ordered a start of a normal saline I.V. They had to escort her into the hospital because of it and our man died."

There was a sound of tenor voice from the couch.  
"Then take it out. I no longer want it.." said Benny,  
rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. "Don't need this either." and he pulled off the oxygen that Julie had placed on him earlier while he napped. "I appreciate all the care you guys are giving me.  
Joe said that you did a lot to save my life.. but those kids down there need you more than I. Please,.."  
and the young, dark haired man raised his taped arm up. "Take it out and go. Use the fact I'm refusing treatment if you have to justify not running this change by a doc first. I'll be fine. I feel fine. Really."

Gage blinked, torn between his sense of precautionary protocol and the instinct of prioritizing Cap's order to the foreground. Common sense won out. "Ok... this will only take a second." and he knelt down by Benny and discontinued his I.V. "This is nearly gone anyway.  
But promise me that you'll keep drinking fluids while you're here."

"I will."

"Good man." and he pulled out the catheter after ending the flow and taped a cotton wad over the site.  
He folded Benny's arm up in half. "Hold your arm like this for a few minutes until things clot up again."

Benny sighed, and hid a cough.

Mike?"

"Yeah.."

"I want you to get Benny down from here the first sign of any more trouble vitals wise on him. Use a helicopter pickup soon as the weather breaks if you have to. We've found a place a chopper can land on the map over there."

Mike Stoker nodded assent.

Then Johnny rose to his feet, appraising the teen with reluctant ambivalence. "Benny, Mike's real good taking over and keeping people's conditions stable. He's quiet, but he's an all right kinda guy once you get to know him. I trust him with all my patients."

"And he's a fabulous cook.." Marco added. "Makes my little old mother from Pasadena jealous. So ask him to make you some more food if you're still hungry."

Benny laughed, looking away shyly.

"Julie, we're clear to leave. Lead the way.."  
Roy said, licking his lips.

Gage grabbed the backpack Roy was about to lift. "I'll handle that thank you. Unlike Benny,  
you ARE still under my care. You just make sure you don't jar those ribs. Last thing we need is to stokes you back up here. Walk ahead of me.."  
Johnny fussed. "Stoker, stay on the communications band. We'll be trying the whole way down. These may not be able to reach the staging area, but they'll sure as h*ll reach the tower."

"Check in every ten minutes.." Stoker recommended.  
"I tested the frequency to the camp. It's still patent."

"Good going. See ya. "  
Gage nodded and opened the door.  
He left following after Kelly, Cassidy, Beck DeSoto and Lopez, ducking only twice at the lightning zinging around the angry night sky. Thunder drowned out his enthusiastic farewell for Benny, but Mike and Benny saw his wave.

-  
Julie paused at the bottom of the long stairs near the trail's foot. She gestured to her left.  
"This way.. I've a method to my madness.  
We'll be running a risk taking the main river path due to high water but it'll be an added safety measure should we run into a firestorm in this wind!" she yelled to them all.

Roy was panting with their exertions but Gage saw his color never paled. DeSoto asked, "How far do we have to go to reach the camp's headquarters?"

"About three miles. The trail's rocky and passes through a narrow gorge, but the lack of rain's in our favor. It won't be muddy." Tim Cassidy replied over the noise of the lightning and the wind from the storm. "Are you doing ok?"

Roy nodded and shooed the brown haired ranger onwards. Gage, kept up at the rear.

"Plan C.." Julie said to all the firemen, "..is that we all take the horses at daybreak and leave from the lodge stables out on search as soon as the light's good."

"Me? Ride a horse?" Chet startled. Then his face broke out into a huge grin. "Far out.."

Johnny just moaned sarcastically. "Yeah.. that's if you don't get yourself tossed off or something and break a leg, Kelly."

"I'm not worried. I'm surrounded by paramedics."  
Chet said as he picked his way over the trail with his heavy supply pack. "And with a real pretty one, too."

"She's married.." Tim Cassidy grinned, looking back.

"Oh, too bad." Gage mourned truly, disappointed.

Julie was oblivious to the exchange, intent as she was with checking her compass for their orientation and coordinates.

A sudden bolt of heat lightning lit up the way ahead and they could see the glint of water raging over a cascade in a smooth tongue of dark amber water beneath them.

"We're at the river. Careful now." Julie said. "Watch your step."

They had gone down the trail fifteen yards when Tim suddenly shouted. "There! One of the kids!"

Everyone glanced up from their feet to see a sprawled boy on his back on a shallow water sandbar.

Tim and Julie both dropped their packs and rushed forward. "Look around, there may be more. The camp teaches a buddy system..."

Soon, Gage and Roy found a little girl, just as wet but alive. She awoke easily at a shake but was very, very cold to the touch. "It's hypothermia.." Roy said over the storm. "See how she's drooling?"

"Yeah.." Gage drew out a thermal sheet and wrapped the girl tightly inside of it.

"I'll carry her.." Roy said, "She's not heavy."  
he said, murmuring encouragement to the mute and numbed child.

Gage shouted out to Tim and Julie.  
"How's yours?!"

"He's alive.. He's got spidering burns on his left leg. Looks like a near strike's effected him. He's got a good carotid and respirations." Julie shouted over the strong wind.

"You gonna backboard him?" Gage asked.

"Yeah.. We can use a backpack's rack and bandages." she answered.

Soon, the boy was on O2 and immobilized.

Lopez and Kelly took both ends of his improvised stretcher and Julie followed at his head with a hand on the boy's pulse,  
monitoring him. "Let's go.. We gotta warm him up just as badly as we need to do her."  
Beck said.

Johnny and Roy started off again in a tight pair around the semi conscious little girl leaning against Roy's chest. "She's not even shivering anymore.." Gage said,  
feeling inside the blanket for the girl's arm.

"I know." DeSoto replied. "Just hurry. I'm watching her consciousness level closely.  
Go.."

Gage reluctantly picked up his packs again and hurried off after the other five ahead of them.

Soon, the dark bulk of a well lit main lodge of a log cabin style campground materialized out of the darkness and storm strobing pine trees.

It was a relief to get out of the wind and all their ears rang in the silence.

Johnny Gage whipped out his HT.  
"HT 51 to Tower Base. Do you read me?"

Stoker's reassuring voice crackled into being.  
"I read you."

"Contact L.A. and the search commander.  
We've found two of the lost children. Both are alive. Set up a relay to Rampart. They're gonna need treatment right away.."

"Hang on,.. I'll be set in a couple of minutes.."  
Mike replied.

Photo: River rescuer watching a waterfall pass.

Photo: A red haired boy lying in a mud puddle.

Photo: A little girl in a purple dress floating in water.

From : patti keiper Sent : Tuesday, June 1, 2004 12:46 AM Subject : [EmergencyTheaterLive] Let the River Run.

DeSoto nodded with satisfaction as Stoker's promise faded away over the speaker.

He carried the unconscious boy over to the bed and began cutting off his clothes for a trauma survey while Julie coaxed the fatigue muted little girl out of her wet dress and got her under a thick pile of covers to begin the process of rewarming her.

Johnny tossed down his handy talkie onto the desk with a clatter. "That's done.  
Mike's getting us Brackett most likely.." he said to Beck and DeSoto. They nodded, knowing the senior physician was the top most expert on pediatric medical emergencies.

Gage moved to the pale little boy and placed him on a new tank of oxygen and checked his pupillary reaction. His earlier smile at Stoker's efforts waned into a frown of frustration.  
"Fat lot of good it'll do having the doc on the horn. There's not much we can do about treating these kids without their parent's consent."  
Johnny bemoaned.

A ripping sound attracted all of their attention.

It was duct tape being pulled down from a screen mesh. "They knew we were coming.." said Tim Cassidy, marvelling. He hefted up a manilla colored cardboard folder in triumph. "This was taped to the lodge door and it's full of could be the go ahead we're looking for."

Gage said, "Chet, leaf through that.. See if all seven kid's consent forms are in there.  
Julie, I need you to help me check the boy's reflexes, I have to concentrate on his vital signs, and Roy's cutting corners, getting his I.V.  
ready."

"Babinski's?" Beck guessed.

"Yeah. Both feet." Johnny replied. "Brackett's gonna want to know about any keraunoparalysis.  
I'm seeing bluish tingeing here on his legs."

Julie nodded. Then she turned to the little girl.  
"Ok, honey.. I'll be right back. You just stay snuggled down deep and this nice ranger will be here to keep you company, all right?" Beck said to her patient.

The girl was too cold to reply. Or do much beyond blinking a few times when Julie stood up as Tim Cassidy took her place.

"I'll make sure she doesn't go to sleep."  
he said to Beck.

Satisfied, Julie went to tend Johnny's request.

Marco had finished completing his examination of the large pine wood panelled room. "The staff really knew we were coming. Or at least the fire crews. There's boxes of medical supplies and tarps and extra hose and directions to the water hydrants." he mentioned. "And a backup generator for the radio to go along with the one it's attached to already."

"Nice.." Chet said. "Johnny, to answer your question,  
yeah, there are seven forms here. With a note from the camp counselors wishing us luck and a copy of the order the staff received from Batallion 14 to clear out."  
he said, waving a transcript in the air.

"So the camp's abandoned.." Tim Cassidy said,  
stroking the hair away from the tiny girl's muddy face.

"Yeah.." Marco replied. "Would you stay behind if you had that looming over your heads?" he asked forking a thumb out the window to where the blood red and orange glow of the valley fire glowed despite of its distance away from the camp.

Nervously, the others glanced up to see the progress of the thunderstorm fueled blaze. Stories high flames across the valley tangled aggressively with the lightning's dry flashes and row by row, pines were disappearing underneath them, utterly consumed.  
"Power's been shut off.." Kelly said, checking out the spacious lodge's fuse box. "I'll get a fire going in the fireplace. It's bound to get cold before it gets hot.."

No one laughed at his joke.

The radio on the table crackled into life again.  
Tim Cassidy picked up the line. Mike Stoker spoke quietly. He had their direct line to Rampart utilizing the ranger tower's mile eating repeater in a two stage relay. Stoker mentioned next to the paramedics that he would be their message dispatcher to the doctor at Rampart.

Soon, the little lightning struck boy had his I.V.  
started and a successful esophageal airway inserted.

The male child was deeply in a coma, but on the EKG monitor, his heart rhythm was steady and stable with no deviations.

Julie rubbed his hair motheringly. "You'll be ok, sweety." she sighed in relief. "Keep fighting like you are and try to wake up soon. We're all here."

Mike Stoker radioed in with the finishing instructions from Dr. Brackett. ##51, do you have the boy fully immobilized? He's concerned with blunt trauma that hasn't begun to display any signs yet.##

"That's affirmative, Stoker." Gage replied into the HT cocked chin tight to his shoulder. His other hand was stringing the Ringer's line to the child's needle port that he had started in the boy's jugular vein. "On a back pack frame. Vasoconstriction seems to be confined to his limbs only. Dendrite burns show the strike entry site was situated on his right shoulder and the exit was through a contact point on his left lateral ankle about three centimeters in diameter. A second exit burn is on his left medial gluteus."

Roy put dressings on those, while they waited for Mike to share their update with Brackett.

At Rampart, Kel looked up in relief at Dixie.  
"That explains the great looking EKG we have on him. The lightning didn't bolt through the heart."

Kel toggled the talk switch to the ranger tower.  
"Stoker, tell 51 to elevate the boy's limbs to slow his intimal damage. Last thing we need is deep tissue necrosis setting in from internal hemorrhaging from his extremity muscles.... Also, ..."

Stoker suddenly hushed the doctor with news from the valley camp. ".. Doctor, DeSoto's noting a change.. He's seeing nonspecific ST-T wave segment changes and a prolonged QT interval on his monitor.."

Dr. Brackett pursed his lips, thinking. "Wish I could see it.." he mumbled to McCall. "I don't like us being in the dark on this one."

"Trust the boys," she said with a reassuring nod.  
"You taught them well on how to interpret cardiac telemetry. Rely on that now, Kel."

Brackett studied Dixie's face seriously for a long moment,  
then he opened the channel back to Mike Stoker.  
"Ranger Tower, tell them to administer .3 mg's of magnesium sulfate I.V. push until they've reached normal sinus rhythm. Tell them to watch for a loss of his deep tendon reflexes in his arms as a signal to know when to halt the drip in the port. That moment will be the indicator of effectiveness. Do not exceed the dosage delivery beyond that point."

##10-4, Rampart..## Stoker replied. ##Stand by..##

A long two minutes dragged by for nurse and doctor.

Finally.. #Normal sinus rhythm's been established#  
burst from the radio speaker.

Dixie celebrated with a beaming smile even as Brackett leaned on the base station counter and dropped his head in relief. "10-4, Ranger Tower. We read you.  
Tell 51 to keep the patient warm and to keep watching for signs of heme pigments in his urine. I want to know the minute any of those show up."

Soon, Mike Stoker finished his relaying information task and the boy was relegated to monitored status while the report on the little girl went out.

Julie happily relayed the child's excellent vital signs and findings and normal EKG. She even received an order to begin warming her by mouth with hot beverages.

"How would you like some hot cocoa?" she asked the cocooned girl.

Slowly, the petite child's eyes beamed in an anticipatory shy smile at Beck's cheek caress with the question. Julie was rewarded with a whispered,  
"Yes, please.."

By the door, monitoring the fire's progress, Chet Kelly was less than calm. "Gage,. Beck, we gotta move, now.  
The edge's just crested the ridge top. And it looks like it's moving in the canopy."

That alarmed all of them. Tree top fire storms were horrible for their reputation, travelling speed and ability to snuff out all the oxygen in the air.  
"The danger of suffocation if we get caught underneath all that's pretty good, I'm afraid.." Kelly added.

Roy said, "I'll stay behind. I'll only slow you down if I was one to go. If things get outta hand with the fire, I'll radio Cap for a rush on his progress getting here."

Johnny nodded, rose, and put his helmet back on.

Julie accepted the helmet Roy gave her, and his turnout coat. She turned to Cassidy. "You make sure to get the calmest horses. Spook, Molly, Diablo Dot and Flash will be the best ones to go. They didn't go out on trails this afternoon with the kids. I'll start picking out the first likely places for us to search on the wall map."

"Give me ten minutes and they'll be set.." and Tim dashed out to saddle the horses.

Gage went out with him. "I'll help. I'm an old hand with horses. I own a ranch."

Tim's doubt on a fireman's ability with horses registered on his face only briefly before both men began to run for the peach stucco-ed stable.

Just a short time later, Kelly, Lopez, Gage and both rangers grabbed ample climbing ropes, medical gear, air bottles and 02 as they went out the door.

Roy and Johnny exchanged lingering looks of worry with each other about the remaining five kids and the very rapid progress of the massive forest fire flowing down to the camp's valley floor level as the screen door banged shut between them.

Then there was no more time for hesitation.

They departed.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The wild night was inky despite the wildfire ringing around them. Immense trunks of protesting pine loomed on the dirt trail Julie led the rescuers upon,  
heading for their first destination to search. The river.  
And the kayak launching beach where the camp held their lessons.

"It's not much farther!" Julie Beck shouted back at the others. "The river eddies into a calmer pool here before the rapids and the waterfall. There's no other building around here that they could've gone to..."

Tim Cassidy said. "There's also a cave up there on that scrub ledge just above the boat shed. We'll split up. Kelly, Gage, go with Julie. Lopez, come with me. We'll be faster that way..! Don't worry about the horses,  
they've been trained to ground tie.."

"They'll stay put through this weather?" Chet asked as he slid awkwardly from his mount, Molly, jarring his helmet almost off his head when his air bottle bumped off the mare's side.

"Like I said. Ground tied. They work with kids, remember?"

"Oh,... yeah..right.." Kelly said, rubbing his chin to dim the bruise pang he received there.

Tim went on. "Just keep on your radios. We'll have a range maximum of a mile until the fire's within 800 yards."

Lopez launched off Diablo's back with the same agility as Johnny off Spook's.

Tim's horse Flash minced his head in nervousness when the stallion didn't feel Tim leave his back as well. "Whoa, boy.  
You and I are med pack couriers for whoever finds a kid first." he mumbled to the horse. "Easy boy." he clicked his tongue inside his mouth to encourage Flash forward after Marco running already for the cave's cliff.

The group rushed off in two directions before their flashlights calling loudly for the names of the missing five children. Julie remained on Dot's back for a high vantage point as she cantered the filly after Lopez and Johnny's swaying flashlights in the darkness.

Johnny and Kelly skidded to a halt at a bizarre sight on the river bank. A little boy wearing a green ranger's hat was sitting and fishing the river by the light of the looming fire on the ridge above. Next to him lay an empty plastic bag of Wonder Bread.

Gage and Julie both ran to the boy thumping onto their knees by him, while Kelly grabbed a blanket out of a horse's saddle bag.

Julie grasped the little boy's face to get his attention over the blowing wind coming from the rushing river below but the boy angrily thrust his chin out of her hands.  
"Let go.. I gotta get some fish. They'll be better. Our bread's run out. Pete'll be getting hungry. He's already so cold."

"What?" Julie said to the little boy. "Kevin,  
what are you saying?"

"He's in shock.." Gage said taking the indian blanket from Chet and wrapping it around the child. "I'll stay with him. Kelly! Go with Julie and scout around.. Pete's gotta be nearby here somewhere.."

Gage made no move to take the cane pole away from the boy where he intently stared at the bopper twisting in the river's current.  
Instead, he wrapped a hand around Kevin's wrist to take a pulse while he spoke softly to him. "Kevin, it's ok.. Now we're here to help you and Pete get out of here. The fire's not going to get you. We've real strong horses who're gonna take us all out of here just as soon as we find Pete. "

The staring boy didn't seem to register Gage's presence.

"Kevin? Where's Pete? Can you tell me that?"

Then, a flicker of recognition when the tiny boy realized that something warm was holding his wrist. His trembling lips spoke so quietly, that Johnny barely heard him.  
"He's hiding. He got sick after we ate all the bread for lunch."

Johnny looked all around them hastily, but saw nothing but wind torn forest.  
"Which way, Kevin? Tell me ... which way did Pete go after he ate with you?"

Kevin unwrapped one of his arms from inside the woven blanket and pointed.

Johnny lifted his HT. "The river! Head upstream!  
Kevin says Pete is there!"

##10-4.##

Julie and Chet didn't go very far when the glint of metal flared under their flashlights by the water's edge. "Belt buckle! Over there!" Kelly shouted.

Beck drove Dot through the marsh grass to where Kelly was pointing and dismounted the mare,  
searching and shouting. "Pete! It's Ranger Julie!  
Shout if you can hear us! We're gonna get you out of here!"

There was no reply.

Chet and Julie followed the point of sparkle near the ground to the river's beach head.

Pete lay head and shoulders under the water,  
sprawled beneath an overturned kayak.

"Oh, no...." Julie moaned and ran.

Chet Kelly radioed Gage in a pico. "We found him. Submersed in shallow water, face down. Hang on.."

Back at the high bank, Johnny's face didn't change from its gentleness as the bad news reached him as he sat with an arm around the silenced Kevin. He didn't even turn around when the sounds of aggressive suctioning and CPR began in the bulrushes behind him. All his attention was on the small child in his arms.

Kevin whimpered. "I gotta catch a fish. Bread's not enough. Pete'll be so hungry come morning.  
I don't know why he's still sleeping there.." he sobbed weakly.

"Kevin.." Johnny said, resting a warm chin on the boy's hat covered head that was sticking out of his warming bearhug.

"....a real big one. A brookie.. With shining spots and ..and.. and.. a gold tail... Just like Ranger Tim said we'll find here in the middle of the willow pool.  
See? I got my bobber out real far. Right to the very center. I'll get one. It's only a matter of sitting real still and keeping quiet and.. and..and waiting it o--"

"Kevin.. I gotta share something with you.. It's gonna be some news... I'm afraid, some .  
really really bad news... about your friend..."  
Gage whispered softly. He could feel the boy's shivering grow more slight in fear.

He glanced over and saw the trouble Beck was having inserting an endotrach tube because of an odd stiffness in Pete's neck and the lack of pinking in his skin from Chet's more than ample one handed CPR. A wide open oxygen line hissed anew when they saw the lack of effective color, too.

Kevin's voice rose in his plans for helping Pete get food enough to eat, louder and louder, trying to drown out what the paramedic holding him was trying to tell him. "...and we'll get a good campfire going. And we'll cook that fat trout up real nice until it's so juicy you can just spit!"

Chet and Julie both looked up at Kevin's agitation, but continued to revive the cold,  
blue little boy beneath their hands. Julie switched to using an ambu bag and a simple oral airway when the better one failed to thread.

Johnny saw the long IC epinephrine syringe unsheath, and get used after a short conversation on the radio.

Gage held Kevin even tighter and gently hushed him. "Shhhhh.. it's ok. We're not hurting him. We're just being his heart and we're breathing for his lungs because they can't do that right now.  
Pete's too chilled."

Bright tears sprang from Kevin's eyes and he flung the fishing pole away into the water and he whirled to hug Johnny fiercely around the neck, burying his face in the fireman's shoulder. "I didn't want Pete to drown.. I- I..I told him ....*sob* we shouldn't use the kayaks by ourselves. But he..he..he wouldn't listen.  
He sneaked us away when we were supposed to leave camp after Counselor Sue told us that the fire was coming. I tried to drag him out, but he fell back in."

"Chet, stop CPR!" Gage heard Julie shout. "I'm getting a whole lot out of his stomach. Roll him."

Panting, the two rescuers turned the boy to drain his nose and mouth. A flashlight bumped and spun around on the ground, casting light onto Pete's bared skin. A dull purplish stain sharply drew itself down the bottoms of Pete's legs, butt and back.  
What it was was undeniable to both the paramedics working on him.

Chet didn't catch it right away. "Ok, Julie, I got his airway clear.. turn him back over."

Julie remained frozen where she was huddled on the moss, not really seeing the signs her eyes were looking at.

"Come on, Julie!" Kelly said, "I gotta start up again. Let go of his shoulders now.. What's the problem?"

"Oh, no. There's pooling." Julie's shocked voice gasped as she ran her fingers over Pete's skin in disbelief.

Chet didn't understand. He was deep in caregiver mode.  
"Beck. Turn him over. I'll take over on the bag. "

Julie's words finally made Gage look over his shoulder at them and the signs Julie was examining.

Chet didn't hear him, intent as he was. "Beck, start the chest compressions. We've already waited too long here."

Gage yelled, knife sharp at his coworker. "Stop! It's lividity, Chet! Open your eyes and get a good look at him. It's over. Can't you see that Pete's really g--." But he broke off.

Stunned, Chet's face fell out of urgency to one of profound sadness as the suction tube slipped from the boy's mouth and dropped to the sand from his gloves.  
He lowered his head... and the curly haired fireman lifted his hands away from the boy.

The wind died then, and the forest filled with a smoky brooding silence and a strange blackness. The grownups tensed as the sound of the approaching hungry fire grew, hissing and popping.  
It made their ears ring with its fiery noise.

The only thing louder was the violent, choking sobs of a little boy whose heart was broken.

"Kevin.. it's ok to cry..." Johnny said to him,  
almost reluctant to touch the angry frightened little boy who was shrinking away from him.  
"Pete's in a better place now.. There's nothing else we can do. He's not cold or hungry any more."

"..no..."

"Kevin.. we have to go now." Gage said in a firmer voice, rising to his feet, bending over to grab the cocooned Kevin's shoulders.

The boy, looking up at the adults with his eyes red and weeping as he tore out of Johnny's grip,  
snarled. "I'm not leaving Pete! Ranger Tim says that you never, EVER leave a buddy. I'm not going!"

He turned to run but the river stopped him.

"Kevin.. Look.." came a woman's call.  
"I brought Dot with me so she can take us home.  
I know it's very dark but can you see her spots?"

"What?" Kevin sobbed.

Beck held out her hands and the reins lying there.  
"Show Dot how to get back to camp. She's lost and..and I don't think she remembers the way. She needs you.....*sniff* .....Here."

Again Julie offered Kevin the reins of the horse.

Bravely, the tearful boy nodded and he accepted them,  
mounting quickly in front of Julie on the saddle.  
Beck turned her horse and galloped towards the direction of Tim and Marco and the cave site.

Behind them, Gage and Kelly put Pete's covered body into an uprighted kayak and launched it into the river followed by a hastily made anchor of rock and a long length of rope.

Gage nodded at Kelly when they were through.  
"The fire won't be able to reach him out there. A recovery crew can come back to get him later."

The two firemen grabbed their horses and hurried after Julie and Kevin.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cassidy and Lopez found the other three children in a cranny deep inside the shallow granite cave at the top of the cliff. It took very little effort for Gage and the others to climb up, reach them, and harness them down safely to the pine needle carpetted valley floor.

They were dirty, and scared, but uninjured.  
Two fireman each took a child and so did one ranger ranger as front passengers aboard their mounts.

The five horses were galloped quickly back to the trail..

But the fire had beaten them first.

Tim's horse Flash, reared as a fireball of burning tree crashed to the ground in front of them. But he held on to the little girl in his arms so tightly, that she didn't fall off.

The air immediately grew too thin to breathe.

"*Cough*! Fire storm! Get back to the river!" Tim yelled.

"*Choke* Masks!" Lopez ordered. "Share yours with the kids!" he said, controlling Diablo's head so he wouldn't jar the child sitting in front of his knees. The air bottles immediately provided breathing room for the humans.

But the horses began to stumble; to trip in the lack of oxygen as sparks flew down from the fire in the pine tops.

Julie gave a shout and smacked a rope so loudly on Dot's haunch that it startled the other horses into a bolt after her. "Go back! *Gasp*! We gotta reach the river and go across. It's the only way we'll find any breathing room for the horses." She whirled Dot the appaloosa around in her tracks.

"What!? Away from the camp? That's nuts! We're leaving Roy and those two kids behind!" Kelly shouted,  
trying to slow his chesnut mare's flight after Dot.

"Cap'll get em, Chet! He's on the way with the fire crew and a stokes team remember?!"  
Gage shouted.

Kelly let go of his hold on Molly's bit and started kicking her flanks. "Ok, come on, girl. Move!"

Johnny clucked urgently, leaning down to encourage Spook into greater speed. "Easy boy, just a little *cough* farther." he said, giving his mask to the child in front of him.

The fire became a live animal and writhed above,  
boiling the air and stripping the pines into black ember impaled skeletons of char in seconds.

But the massive fire column twisting in the sky did not descend to consume the rescuers and children into its fierce dance.

A wall of heat began to burn the hides of the laboring horses on their rears.

Then..... Sploosh!

The water's surface offered its layer of breathable air when the five horses splashed into the river's current and began swimming for the shelter of the opposite side.

Looking behind him, Johnny could just see the orange dot of Pete's kayak safely moored by the beach in the center of the willow pool. Then smoke obscured it.

Blowing hard and coughing, the camp horses bore their riders onwards, gasping in effort and frothing.

Then they were staggering up the far side's knotty boulders and into the peaceful forest whose fire hadn't yet the strength to endanger.  
The firemen and rangers glanced back only once at the raging inferno they had left behind. Two singed deer stood in the river, looking back at them, frightened of the humans but even more frightened of the fire. The mulies didn't even move at all.

Julie and Tim took them all to a very high bare rise of rock where Gage dismounted gladly. He took out a cherry flare from a pocket and ignited it for the distant choppers. Its light burst out into a red star from the wax seal and the wind carried away the steam trail into the sky.

As they watched, collapsed, and holding the horses,  
drop planes and water helicopters cut a hole in the fire line with chemicals and liquid suppressants until the way to the ranger tower was clear of flames.

Soon, they were overrun with rescuers and vehicles and brush firemen, who rushed to take the children to the command center down the highway where the ambulances and flight helicopters were waiting.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Gage coughed as he sucked in more oxygen from a mask an aid worker had given him in Fire Relief Receiving.

Roy sat on a cot next to him, still covered with dirt but he was still far more cleaner than his partner was.

DeSoto smiled. "So, how did it feel to be on horseback like that with the rescue gear on and all?"

"What do you mean, Roy? I was on horseback yesterday at home when I worked out Eagle."

"You know what I mean. I've always wondered about mounted firemen at forest fires... using horses to get around at the fringes of a blaze, then using them to go on rescues..." he hinted. "I- I - I know rangers already have a mounted service. I used to think that was really kinda neat.  
I was just wondering that maybe I should suggest to someone about the forest fire department maybe starting one up, too...." he said, very reflective. Then he smiled with shy curiosity at Johnny.  
"So..how did it feel?"

"You know Roy, quite frankly, I don't remember much.  
All I kept thinking about was those children and and..and.  
keeping the fire off us long enough to save all our skins." Johnny admitted, cock eye grinned. "But I'll admit that deep down inside, I felt a bit like the Lone Ranger because I had a mask on and everything." he joked.

The two paramedic firemen laughed together about that mental image until Julie Beck and Tim Cassidy came into the tent following their medical checkups.

Gage smiled. "Hey.. how are the horses? I figured we ran em pretty ragged out there."

"They're fine. Dot took a burn on the hock but the vet says it'll heal cleanly." Julie said. "The rest of them just have melted hair damage. No wounds."

"That's good."

Tim took off his ranger's hat in a gesture of respect that made Johnny and Roy sit up straighter. "Well, we've got to get going. We've piles of reports to fill out about all thisback at Devil's Head. Listen.. I appreciate all that you guys tried to do for Pete. It means a whole lot to me and Julie." Cassidy said meaningfully. The hint of sadness about the boy's loss still covered his voice.

Both Johnny and Roy got to their feet and accepted the rangers' handshakes of farewell.

"It's our job to try, Mr. Cassidy. Next time, we'll beat death. Like we always do ....the majority of the time."  
Johnny emphasized.

"It's been a real pleasure.." Roy said. "Who knows,  
perhaps we'll work together again in the future."

"Count on it." Beck beamed, wiping away her tears with a kleenix through a smile.  
"Take care.."

"You two.." Gage said. "Stay gold."

The rangers departed.

Sighing, Roy and Johnny vacated the medical tent and stood outside under the stars. Already, the forest fire to the east, was dimming as cool blessed rain fell in abundance to snuff it out as the light of a rising dawn grew brighter.

"Hey, would you look at that.." Johnny said in mild surprise. He started smiling ear to ear.

"Look at what?" Roy asked, crossing his arms over his dusty uniform shirt. He winced when he bumped his taped up ribs.

"Over there, in the camp evacuation block.  
That's Kevin, one of the little boys we rescued on the mountain. He's in that tent under that pine tree playing with one of the search dogs."

"Oh yeah.." Roy smiled in pleasure. "Looks like he's doing fine now. Looks like his parents have found him already."

"Yeah..."

A clattering of hooves on pavement broke their reverie on the soothing sight of a healing child as Chet Kelly rode by on Molly, the brown camp stable horse. "Hiya fellas!! " he shouted enthusiastically.  
"What'ya say Johnny.. Think you can hire me out to exercise your barrel horse once in a while? I think I'm really starting to get the hang of all this riding stuff.  
Yeehhaaaaa!" and he asked Molly to rear in a trick he had discovered that she knew.

The mare's stunt startled several passing firefighters on the way to the firelines and caused a water truck to screech to a halt in alarm.

"Chester B Kelly. Get down from there!" ordered a booming, couldn't be denied voice. "You're making the whole Los Angeles County Fire Department look like a bunch of cowboys.." growled Captain Stanley from the nearby command tent.

"That can be a good thing, Cap..." Johnny murmured secretively, thinking of Roy's earlier views.

"Johnny, you just hush.. Kelly, down off her and get that ridiculous ranger hat off your head. I wanna see hooves back to the shelter corral so fast that horseshoe sparks'll still be lit on the asphalt long after you're gone. Or do you like the idea of being assigned drip torch detail on the fire line for the rest of the day before you get breakfast?"

Kelly and Molly were ballistic missiles.

Cap felt the breeze of their departure ruffle his overcoat as they galloped away.

Stanley grinned in satisfaction and entered the chow tent with a happy wave at Johnny and Roy. "That felt wonderful. Always a good thing to let off a little steam after a bad fire.." he quipped.

Roy and Johnny moved away from the fire command tent and accepted plates of food from the aid workers as they sat down in front of a bon fire lit by some of the valley camp's staff, for warmth.

Roy chewed, after finding a comfortable position,  
then he asked. "So... are you gonna do it?"

Johnny was inhaling his food like a vacuum cleaner.  
"Do what?" he asked, chipmunk cheeked. He burned his mouth on some coffee that was too hot and Roy had to grab a handful of ice from a water cooler to put out the fire.

"Let Chet work out Eagle.." DeSoto continued.

"Oh,. Huh. That.." Gage chuckled. "Thanks for the ice.  
Don't think I scalded myself more than a little bit. Heh.  
Uh.. I think I'll.....I think I'll let ....Chet handle my horse.."  
he reflected.

"Your prized appaloosa barrel racer?" Roy asked,  
wide eyed in shock.

"No, not him. I think I'll let Chet manage Cochise,  
the Falabella. He comes about knee high. He's a miniature horse, Roy."

Roy burst out laughing to the point of crying out in pain when his splinted ribs shook. ".. Ha.! hehe. Ow.. ouch.. I don't think Chet's gonna like that idea very much. I think Chet had in mind that he wanted to ride some more."

"Nah uh.. no way. Not on my horses. He can just play amusement pony ride manager for Cochise at the Fireman's Picnic event and be happy."

"If you say so. Johnny.. Come on, let's go get cleaned up and hit the hay.. I'm bushed." Roy said standing up and walking away from the campfire to make room for new hungry firefighters.

Gage said, scooping up a donut from a box as he hurried after his partner. "Ouch. Roy, I'm speared clear through... That hay pun wasn't very funny at all. " Then.. his voice lifted in an idea. "Sayyyy,, " John's purred in discovery, "If I play my cards right.. maybe I can get Chet to be my new stable boy at the ranch. He'll pitch plenty of hay then for sure if I can convince him that it's worth it." he grinned.

"Better be prepared to pay.."

"Pay what?"

"A wage. I don't think Chet'll do anything with horses for free unless it's strictly riding them."

"Who says?"

"I do.." DeSoto said frankly, biting into an apple.

"Wanna bet?"

Roy stopped in his tracks and set both hands as best he could on his hips and regarded Gage through slitted, calculating eyes. "After a full night's sleep I will."  
he challenged, chewing slowly.

Johnny matched his stance, just as scrutinizing, through equally slitted eyes. His finger came up and poked Roy on the chest. "How much?" he asked with a cat that ate the canary smirk.

Mike Stoker strode by, in fresh turnout, towelling off his shower fresh, damp hair. "Don't go for it. He'll rob ya." he called out mischieviously.

Gage never changed his position. "Don't listen to him. He's just an engineer. How much?" he asked Roy again, without even glancing at the gesture taunting head shaking in the negative Mike rounding the corner away from them.

DeSoto studied Mike and then angled his jaw in a final decision. "See you later this evening when our night shift starts." Roy told Johnny and he resumed his slow, rib favoring walk.

"Aww Roy, pally. Come on, what's a little bet between friends?" Gage asked, stepping comically as he fluttered around his much larger companion.

"A whole lot. Night, Johnny. Go saw some wood." and the tent door flapped shut in Johnny's face as Roy passed through it.

"I'd rather burn some...." Gage said, smiling. He turned back around to look towards the civilian tents. "..in a campfire,  
roasting marshmellows, with a little boy who really really really likes to fish. I'll just bet little Kevin'll love riding Cochise at the Fireman's Picnic Event next month."

FIN

Episode Ten.. From Loaves To Fishes

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Photo : A boy and dog in an orange kayak, in smoke.

Photo : Boy in a green ranger hat, fishing.

Photo: A firestorm bearing down on two deer in a river.

Photo: A woman crossing water on a spotted white mare.

Photo: Chet and Johnny negotiating.

Photo: Men relaxing around a night campfire in the woods.

Photo: Roy in a cowboy hat, smiling.

*  
Emergency Theater Live =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

ETL Hosts : Patti Keiper and Erin James in the United States

** Emergency Theater Live "Offstory" Email Address For Midi Music Requests and General Inquiries . Emergency Theater Live Homepage

.com/group/emergencytheaterlive Writer's Pre-Production Distribution Site

.com/emergencyfans Emergency Theater Live /Emergency Fans Unite at MySpace

ETL's Emergency Community Forum /

____________________________________

Mark VII Productions, NBC, and Universal owns all of Emergency! and its Characters. 2009 . All rights reserved.

=========================

***NOTE: All author writings submitted to the theater will be set free onto the web to reach as many readers as we can manage to find. Contributing to any ETL episode means that has permission to publish your work in the manner presented here on this website and on text versions of the stories on other sites. All web audience writers or volunteer consultants and their corresponding emails will be duly recorded and left in place within each show's music and imaged airing episode, pointing out that fan or professional EMS personnel's creative contribution. Theater Host- Emergency Theater Live! .. 


End file.
